Cosmic Heroes (Eternity Comics, 1988)

A nice little collection of early Buck Rogers strips....

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Download 2

Paul Dini's Jingle Belle - Santa Claus vs Frankenstein (Image Comics, 2008)

I love Christmas, Santa Claus, and Frankenstein. Plus, Paul Dini's Jingle Belle is good stuff...so,...bonus. A book tailored specifically for the Me demographic.

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Vault of Horror #35 (Feb.-Mar. 1954)

Here's a classic E.C. Christmas themed horror story that's been adapted for the screen not once, but twice (the first time for the 1972 Amicus anthology film TALES FROM THE CRYPT, starring Joan Collins, and again for the second episode of the HBO series of the same name)..

Merry Christmas, kids...

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The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #22 (DC Comics, 1982)

Here we are for yet another Christmas Countdown, and to start things off this year, I present to you The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #22 , which features a favorite of mine, "The Seal Men's War on Santa Claus!"...

In the final Fleischer-Kirby-created adventure (intended for The Sandman vol. 1 #7 but published in The Best of DC #22) he even assists the legendary Santa Claus against a menacing band of Seal Men who are angry about being sent the wrong gifts during the previous Christmas

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Ambush Bug (DC Comics,1984)

I'm a long-time fan of the works of Keith Giffen, and his AMBUSH BUG stuff (along with collaborator Robert Loren Fleming) is absolutely hilarious.....

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Freddy Krueger's A Nightmare on Elm Street #1-#2 (1989 Marvel Magazine)

I remember there being a big stink about this mag when it was being published...I picked up the first issue off the newsstand, and it took me years to track down the second issue....

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Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation (Marvel, 2005)

Not only is this book written by Garth Ennis, but it has mind-blowing art by Clayton Crain...

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Bram Stoker's DRACULA (Topps Comics, 1992)

Quite possibly one of the best comic book adaptations of a film ever done, IMO. Mignola's work on this is nothing short of awesome..

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Sabrina, The Teenage Witch #58 (Archie Comics, August 2004)

I don't know why, because I'm not a manga reader, but the Tania Del Rio run of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch has always kinda intrigued me. I've always meant to track down the run and give it a read out of curiousity's sake, and finally have. I think the thing that fascinates me the most about it is that it's pretty much the prototype for some of the stuff that Archie Comics is experimenting with these days (i.e., a change-up to the Dan DeCarlo driven "house style", continuity influenced story arcs, etc.,)...

From Wikipedia:

In 2004, beginning with issue #58 (in the second Sabrina the Teenage Witch comic book series), the comics were taken over by Tania del Rio with her manga-inspired art and design style. The comics were then released featuring new characters and a slightly more serious, continuity-heavy plot. The manga Sabrina story wrapped up at issue #100 in 2009, albeit with a few unresolved subplots. Only one manga-sized trade paperback was released during the series' run, reprinting issues #58-61.

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Comic Book Collecting And History (VHSRip, 1989)

Here's another VHS I've picked up at some time, somewhere, over the last two decades that I have no clue where it came from. If yer into Gary Owens, the artwork of Steve Rude, and a comic shop owner that was typical of the type in the late 1980s, this is your lucky day!

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Todd McFarlane's Comic Book Facts and Illusions (VHSRip 1992)

I purchased this VHS at some point around 1992 or '93 from my hometown Wal-Mart. After going back and viewing while I was making the transfer, and came to the conclusion that you....yes, you!...will BELIEVE that a guy who sounds like and acts about as smart as Bill Murray in Caddyshack can make a million bucks drawing funnybooks....

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Honey West (Gold Key, 1966)

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Dakota North Investigations (Marvel Comics, 1986)

I loved this quirky little book during it's publication (way back in '86 to '87....man, am I showing my age), and am glad to see the character getting some on-panel time in the current run of Daredevil...

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Gary Gianni's The MonsterMen (1999, Dark Horse Comics)

For decades, the skull of the world's most dangerous necromancer has been guarded in a secret Tibetan monastery. Now the whereabouts of the skull have been discovered by creatures who would use it to awaken its former owner. Now Benedict, boneweary after five centuries of battling for the Order of Corpus Monstrum, heads into the Himalayas to take possession of the skull, but not before confronting the monstrous Yeti, while St. George, millionaire film mogul, falls off the side of a mountain. Eisner Award winner Gary Gianni (Batman Black & White, Solomon Kane) breaks out of the pages of Hellboy with his bizarre adventure team in their first feature presentation. Mike Mignola provides a backup: "Goodbye Mister Tod," in which Hellboy battles a horrible thing that's coming out of a guy's mouth.

I remember really digging this book (and it's cast of characters, which I first discovered via the back-up published in various Hellboy projects), and had hoped Gianni would follow up on it, but I believe he hasn't. It's a shame, too..

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Vigilante- 1947 Columbia Pictures Cliffhanger Serial Ad Campaign Mat

I'm a HUGE fan of Greg Saunders, the Golden Age Vigilante...have been since I was a kid and read All-Star Squadron #29, which was Roy Thomas and Jerry Ordway's re-telling of the origin of the Seven Soldiers of Victory. Love, love, love the character. Probably my favorite DC character of all time.

I'm also a HUGE fan of the now-bygone cinematic format of the cliffhanger serial. One of the things that has always made me sad is that the 1947 Columbia Pictures serial based on the character has never been made available in any form of home video format, be it VHS or DVD. Gray market bootleg copies of the serial have existed since the 1980s on VHS, and recently I discovered someone had made digital video file transfers from one of these VHSs, so those are floating around out there in bittorrent land, for those interested and devoted enough to find them....

Well, on a whim, I stop by a local home having a yardsale, and discover a cardboard box containing old lobbycards and advertising campaign "mats" (studio marketting used to send out press packets to newspapers around the country containing these, which were basically ad copy to be used by local theatres to promote releases)....and this is what I found for one measley dollar....

It must be for a re-release of the serial, because it's copyright dated 1957....but, still...for a Vigilante fan like myself...it felt like fate had led me to that box.


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Filmation's Ghostbusters (First Comics, 1986)

When I was 10 in 1984, the film Ghostbusters debuted and blew me away. I absolutely loved it...but the animated tie-in produced a few years later, The REAL Ghostbusters...not so much.

What's weird is what I did take a liking to....Filmation's answer to it (and they're attempt at holding onto the copyright to the name "Ghostbusters")....Filmation's ORIGINAL Ghostbusters...

Here's some info, via Wikipedia:
Ghostbusters (later called Filmation's Ghostbusters) was an animated television series created by Filmation and distributed by Tribune Broadcasting and launched following the success of Ivan Reitman and Columbia Pictures' 1984 film Ghostbusters. It ran from September 8 to December 5, 1986 in daytime syndication and produced 65 episodes. The cartoon was based on a live-action television show from 1975-1976 titled The Ghost Busters. It is not to be confused with the animated show The Real Ghostbusters, which was based on the 1984 film Ghostbusters. Columbia Pictures had to obtain the rights to the name from Filmation for its film, and after Ghostbusters was a hit, Filmation went into production with its animated series based on the characters from its series. The series is technically called simply "Ghostbusters", but home video releases use the name "Filmation's Ghostbusters" to avoid confusion. Reruns of the show are scheduled to air on the qubo channel in Fall 2010, and on the Retro Television Network in October 2010

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Issue #1

Issue #2

Issue #3

Issue #4

Fright Night #1 (Now Comics, 1988)

I can remember in 1988 when Now Comics made their big push into newsstand sales, and this was one of the first books to make it there. The first few issues are a fairly decent adaptation of the first film, and then it would go on to follow the continuing adventures of the vampire killing duo of Charlie and Peter St. Vincent...

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Razorline- First Cut (1993, Marvel Comics)

From Wikipedia:


Razorline was an imprint of American comic book company Marvel Comics that ran from 1993-1995. It was created by filmmaker and horror/fantasy novelist Clive Barker, with its characters existing in one of the many alternate universes outside the mainstream continuity known as the Marvel Universe.

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"Stomachs get even at night." 1968 Wally Wood Alka-Seltzer Ad

Being a big fan of the works of the late Wallace "Wally" Wood, I was delighted to have discovered this.


Wally Wood's colorful Alka-Seltzer print ad, "Stomachs Get Even At Night," was a huge success, winning a 1967 Art Directors Club Medal. The ad received such a favorable response that Wood was hired to convert it into storyboards, and this 1968 TV commercial was the result.

Download Link:
1968 Wally Wood Alka-Seltzer Ad .AVI


Bonus: Original Print Ad and Storyboard Art

Youngblood (with extra Rob Liefeld wonderfulness)

Going through my comic collection the other day, I cran across copies of the first 8 issues of Rob Liefeld's Youngblood (two extra copies of #1 and #2, even) Now...I can remember actually buying the first two issues when they came out...but realized the error of my ways earlier than the rest of the fanboys around me, and stopping there. For the life of me I cannot remember where and when I came to acquire these other issues...for the faintest idea why I'd have lost my senses and bought them. I have a theory, though....one that involves an early Saturday morning trip to the local fleamrket/swap meet, hung over, and getting a good laugh at digging through long boxes of comics there offered by shady dealers.

"Hey...remember Youngblood? Whatta load of....oh,...they're a quarter apiece? Sold!"

Now..I'm not here to ridicule the talents of Rob. Other folks funnier than myself have already done that to death. I'm just here to share my pain....and some goofy stuff I had laying around on VHS that I had totally forgotten about. Enjoy!

Younblood #0-#8

Rob's Levi's 501 commercial AVI file

Powers Coloring/Activity Book #1 (Image Comics, 2001)

One of the few projects Brian Michael Bendis was ever involved with that I actually enjoyed...

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Hee-Haw #1 (Charlton Comics, 1970)

When I was akid growing up in the sticks, this television show seemed to be required viewing amongst folks of my parents and grandparents age. Now, I was a kid that stuck out like a sore thumb amongst my peers....and sought a means to escape my rural farmland hometown via education. I thought further education was a means of escaping the stereotypes that had been thrusted upon my peers. And I succeeded...somewhat.

Then, a weird thing happened in my twenties, after graduating college.

I started to become nostalgiac for this odd culture...the so-called "hill-billy" lifestyle, that I struggled to leave behind. It's weird the things one finds comfort in as they grow older, I guess.

Anyways....I love oddball comics. I love Charlton books. And, just to show you that Charlton would license anything....here's 1970's Hee-Haw #1.

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The Flash (1990 TV Series) TV Guide Promotional Material

This is a little something I cooked up after discovering a box of junk I'd been lugging around since high school, in which I saved various TV Guide promo images and write-ups from other publications about the CBS live-action show. Please forgive the sloppy scans, but basically I was dealing with 20 year old clipping from TV Guide that were mounted into a makeshift scrapbook....

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The Essential Marvel Tails (Marvel, 1987-91)

Here's what happens when I have way too much time on my hands, folks.....I edit and compile a cbz full of scans collecting every single one of the Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham back-up stories that appeared in the much-missed Marvel reprint title Marvel Tales during a period from 1987 to 1991. Why? Because I was bored, had always wanted all these stories collected into one nice neat package....and I love the character, and have since childhood. So, enjoy....

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HKC's Longbox: Manhunter (Mark Shaw)

I've decided to start presenting a feature here at the blog focusing on short-lived titles that I collected and had a great love for during my youth that are either now forgotten....or nobody really gives a crap about these days. I've decided to title it "HKC's Longbox"....because this is the kinda crap I've been carrying around for a little over 30 years in longboxes.

Around 1987 or so, I was a follower of writer John Ostander's work at DC Comics, having been a fan for a year or so of his run of Suicide Squad. I thought this particular incarnation of the concept was pretty brilliant thinking on his part, and even though I really didn't enjoy (in hindsight) some of the things that came out of DC's most-recent "event" book, Millenium, I was eagerly awaiting this new take on the Manhunter property that he was going to be involved with because I found it too to be a pretty innovative idea, comic book-wise.

The concept was simple: Mark Shaw was a costumed bounty hunter....who specialized in bounties involving super-powered criminals. Here's a hero who actually sought to profit on taking down bad guys. One of the typical cliched conventions of superheroes I always found kinda weird was the idea that once you received super-powers, a magic ring, were rocketted from a doomed planet, struck by lightning, got hit by a gamma bomb......whatever....you always suddenly grew a set of morals and a a code of ethics.


Download First Issue Special #5- the first appearence of Mark Shaw, Manhunter

The Mark Shaw Manhunter incarnation was a concept that had been created by Jack Kirby, used once in the 1970s, and discarded. Other writers picked up on it in the years that followed but kept changing Shaw's costumed alter egos (at one point, he was a pirate themed character called The Privateer and a cosmic powered bad guy calling himself the Star Tsar), but nothing seemed to stick. Thankfully, after the Millenium cross-over, where it was revealed the secret society/cult that saw first encountered and gave him the mantle of Manhunter was actually in league with the evil android Green Lantern villians, Shaw turned back into a good guy, and after the Manhunters were destroyed (at least for a short time), became the only person in the DCU to carry that mantle.

Download Manhunter #1-24 (1987-89)
#1-#8

#9-#16

#17-#24

Evel Knievel Ideal Toys Give-Away (Marvel Comcs, 1974)

If you're a child of the 1970s, much like myself, then you probably have a great love for that particular decade's version of Jackass...Evel Knievel...

Oh, how I covetted and desired the Ideal toys, begging my parents until they broke down and bought me all of them....

Well, here for you reading pleasure is the give-away comic that was packaged with the toys....I sure do miss rip-chord cycles....

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Seduction of the Innocent

From Wikipedia:

Seduction of the Innocent is a book by American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a negative form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. The book was a minor bestseller that created alarm in parents and galvanized them to campaign for censorship. At the same time, a U.S. Congressional inquiry was launched into the comic book industry. Subsequent to the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, the Comics Code Authority was voluntarily established by publishers to self-censor their titles.

Seduction of the Innocent cited overt or covert depictions of violence, sex, drug use, and other adult fare within "crime comics" — a term Wertham used to describe not only the popular gangster/murder-oriented titles of the time, but superhero and horror comics as well. The book asserted, largely based on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children.

Comics, especially the crime/horror titles pioneered by EC, were not lacking in gruesome images; Wertham reproduced these extensively, pointing out what he saw as recurring morbid themes such as "injury to the eye". Many of his other conjectures, particularly about hidden sexual themes (e.g. images of female nudity concealed in drawings of muscles and tree bark, or Batman and Robin as gay partners), met with derision within the comics industry. (Wertham's claim that Wonder Woman had a bondage subtext was somewhat better documented, as her creator William Moulton Marston had admitted as much; however, Wertham also claimed Wonder Woman's strength and independence made her a lesbian. However, she is traditionally portrayed as a heterosexual and a virgin). Wertham also claimed that Superman was un-American and was a fascist.

Wertham critiqued the commercial environment of comic book publishing and retailing, objecting to air rifles and knives advertised alongside violent stories. Wertham sympathized with retailers who didn't want to sell horror comics, yet were compelled to by their distributors' table d'hôte product line policies.

The fame of Seduction of the Innocent added to Wertham's previous celebrity as an expert witness and made him an obvious choice to appear before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency led by anti-crime crusader Estes Kefauver. In extensive testimony before the committee, Wertham restated arguments from his book and pointed to comics as a major cause of juvenile crime. The committee's questioning of their next witness, EC publisher William Gaines, focused on violent scenes of the type Wertham had decried. Though the committee's final report did not blame comics for crime, it recommended that the comics industry tone down its content voluntarily. Possibly taking this as a veiled threat of potential censorship, publishers developed the Comics Code Authority to censor their own content. The new code not only banned violent images, but entire words and concepts (e.g. "terror" and "zombies"), and dictated that criminals must always be punished. This destroyed most EC-style titles, leaving a sanitized subset of superhero comics as the chief remaining genre. Wertham nevertheless considered the Comics Code inadequate to protect youth.

Seduction of the Innocent was illustrated with comic-book panels offered as evidence, each accompanied by a line of Wertham's sardonic commentary. The first printing contained a bibliography listing the comic book publishers cited, but fears of lawsuits compelled the publisher to tear the bibliography page from any copies available, so copies with an intact bibliography are rare. Early complete editions of Seduction of the Innocent often sell for high figures among book and comic book collectors.

Among comic-book collectors any comic book with a story or panel referred to in Seduction of the Innocent is known as a "Seduction issue", and is usually more valued than other issues in the same run of a title. Seduction of the Innocent is one of the few non-illustrative works to be listed in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as a collectible in its own right.

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B-Movie Madness: Gorgo (Charlton, 1961-64)

I love this book....not only is it an adaptation of the 1961 British attempt at ripping off Godzilla (I'm a HUGE fan of the Toho Titan), but it features a ton of great art by Steve Ditko.

Download Link (Issues #1-12)

Download Link (Issues #13-23)