CBT: Peter Potamus Coloring Book, Part 4!

Where are Peter and So-So headed for next? Find out when you click

Countdown to Halloween: More Monster Cards!

Not sure what series these are...


More after the jump!

By the 10s: Teen-Aage Love!

Time for another Charlton romance comic on By the 10s!


Issue 10! More after the jump!

Countdown to Halloween: The Mummy's Ghost 8mm Digest!

Countdown to Halloween: The Ghost of Frankenstein Crestwood House Book!

As promised, from now on, the Wednesday monster book/magazine reviews will feature complete books or magazines each week, and it all starts with The Ghost of Frankenstein!

Read on after the jump!

Countdown to Halloween: Retro-Review - Adventures Into the Unknown #1, Part 1!

Time for a new comic for Retro-Reviewing, and this time it's Adventures Into the Unknown #1, published by American Comics Group in 1948! The very dark cover for this issue is by Edvard Moritz, who did some work on the interiors, too!

The inside front cover featured a table of contents (with stories out of order, by the way) plus a disclaimer from the publisher called “To Our Readers.” It reads: “Superstition is ignorance. It's part of the dark ages from which man emerged centuries ago. But great classical authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Horace Warpole and many others have done much to keep alive the tradition of the 'ghost' story—and to this day, teales of the mysterious unknown still grip our imaginations! This despite the fact that there are no such things as ghosts! There never were – there never will be! Yet, since stories of the superational will live forever, we invite you to enjoy the following 'Adventures Into... the Unknown!'” The background for all this is a tombstone with a large hooded spook standing behind it, showering down bones and skulls from its outstretched hands.


The first story in this book is “The Werewolf Strikes,” an eight-pager with art by Edvart Moritz. The tale begins in “the frozen timberlands of Northern Canada,” where three men – one armed with a rifle, one with a lasso, and one with a rope – have cornered a large gray wolf. Before they can capture or kill the wolf, it leaps for the guy with the lasso (smart wolf, that) and attacks him as the guy with the rifle shoots! The other guy with a rope ties up the wolf, and two other men come over with a crate labeled “John Wilder, Zoological Import” on the side. Apparently, the wolf did kill its target, and Wilder (the guy with the rifle) muses over the situation:

In a nearby cabin, a woman is hanging garlic up on the wall, and when her husband questions her (I'm assuming it's her husband), she says it's to ward off werewolves! She's certain that Jacques the logger, who was bitten by a wolf and disappeared, became a werewolf! That night, at Wilder's camp, Wilder shows off his captive to Barbara (his wife?) before they head off to bed. After they leave, the wolf changes to Jacques, and he escapes the cage, and makes his way to Wilder's tent, and he abducts Barbara!

Pursuing his wife's captor, he runs up at him with a gun! The two grapple, and Wilder shoots Jacques! Jacques flees in search of a doctor, but he turns back into his wolf form again, and decides to return to the cage, hoping his wound will be treated. The entire camp is awakened by the howls of agony, and Wilder has returned. Wilder treats the wolf's wounds. Ten days later, the Wilders are out at sea with their captive en route to San Francisco, and as it nears the Golden Gate, the beast makes a second attack on Barbara!


Barbara flees the wolf, but stumbles down a flight of stairs. She seems all right, and the ship's doctor advises Wilder to get her into a taxi after the ship docks. Another ten days pass, and the wolf is on display at a zoo, where it's considered the most vicious-looking beast anyone's ever seen. What they don't know is that at night, the wolf escapes its cage and starts a reign of terror!

Now, ACG's writers have obviously mixed up the weaknesses of werewolves and vampires – first there was the woman hanging up garlic, and now, the caption informs us that werewolves cannot cross running water! This makes the wolf vulnerable, and it is shot by a policeman. Later that night, at John Wilder's home, Wilder and his wife are arguing over whether the wolf is responsible for the slaying when the radio informs them that the wolf has been wounded, but it got away! Suddenly, at the window...

Barbara screams for her husband to help as the wolf attacks! John manages to reach a table where a silver paper knife is, and attacks the wolf! As expected, it has the usual effect on werewolves...


OK, this story really went around and around before it really got to the point, if you ask me. It took way too long to mention Jacques, and then there was just one ridiculous thing after another. I don't even understand why the had the werewolf being affected at all by ordinary bullets when they planned to have it killed by the silver knife – and isn't it a good thing that was handy, on the table, in the same room the werewolf was attacking Barbara in?

Next time: “The Living Ghost,” a story I've referred to here at the Random Acts of Geekery before!

Comic Book Advertisements!

About time I returned to doing these again, eh? Last time I did any of these kind of posts was back in 2008! So, let's see what kind of cool (or not so cool) stuff was being advertised back when, shall we?


First up, from the October, 1966 cover-dated Marvel Comics is this ad for this extremely cool Thing sweatshirt! In case you can't read the back of Ben's shorts, they read "If you can read this, you're too darn close!" $3.15 plus a quarter for postage sure sounds cheap these days, doesn't it? You probably can't even just mail a sweatshirt for that kind of money these days! I think the front side of this sweatshirt has been reissued as a t-shirt in the recent past.

More ads after the jump!

Countdown to Hallloween: Original Comic Art!

Been waiting eleven months for more horror/monster/mystery art? The wait is over!


First up in this year's Countdown to Halloween Comic Art is page 26 from House of Mystery #38, by Howard Purcell! More after the jump!

Garage Sale Report!

One of the things I like to do with my family on the weekends is hit the road to find garage sales! Typically, I don't tend to find anything I want (we usually get lots of stuff for the kids, though), but this time, I had high hopes because the Reuse Fair was being held at the Thurston County Fairgrounds. This annual event is basically the closest we get to a swap meet around here, and it's largely garage-sale type stuff.

Anyway, I got a pretty good haul, and only spent about 30 bucks! Here's the tally:

COMIC BOOKS:
Marvel Super Action #32
DC Comics Presents #3 (Whitman Edition)
Marvel Triple Action #29, 45
Super-Soldier Man of War #1 (part of the Amalgam Comics line, bought just to make a purchase an even dollar amount)
Thor #271
Amazing Adventures (2nd series) #2
X-Men Annual #3
King Comics Popeye and Communications and Media Careers, Popeye and Manufacturing Careers
Freedom Fighters #6
Beowulf Dragonslayer #5
Grimm's Ghost Stories #17
The Phantom (Charlton) #59, 62, 69, 73
Kid Colt Outlaw #217
Star Trek (Gold Key) #49
Comics Scene #5
The Six Million Dollar Man (Charlton Magazine) #2

CHILDREN'S BOOKS
Peter Potamus Meets the Black Knight (1965)
King Leonardo and the Royal Contest (1962)
Mighty Mouse - Dinky Learns to Fly (1953)

CALVIN AND HOBBES BOOKS (20 cents each!)
The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book
There's Treasure Everywhere
Weirdos from Another Planet!
Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985-1995
The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book
The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes
The Revenge of the Baby-Sat
Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
It's a Magical World
The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes

Overall, I'd say that's a pretty darn good haul!

CBT: Peter Potamus Coloring Book, Part 3!

More coloring book adventures of Peter and So-So here!

More after the jump!

Countdown to Halloween: Monster Monday!

Time for your regularly scheduled installment of Monster Monday goodies!

And this week, we begin with some stills from Son of Dracula, with more to follow after the jump!

Cool Stuff: Marvel Stuff!

Time to look at Marvel stuff, but first, a mixed Marvel and DC assortment of stuff!

Apparently sun visors like these were popular at one time, as witness the above Hulk, Spidey and Superman items! After the jump, it's all Marvel stuff!

Puzzle Sunday!

Last week's solution:

This week's puzzle:

Solution next week!

Countdown to Halloween: Monster Laffs Cards!

Here's the rest of the Monster Laffs cards I didn't present last year!


More after the jump!

Spooky, Scary This 'n That Time! (Well, not that spooky or scary)

Gotta keep a theme going, y'know! Here's a bunch of shorter items to browse over:

ITEM! As some of you were probably expecting, I'm currently going to classes for fall quarter, as I get into my second year of college to become a Medical Assistant (which is why I got a bit further behind than usual in catching up on comments). Now that I've got a handle on the classes and the workload, I can definitely say I'm not stressing out as much as I was the first few weeks of spring quarter! All but one of the classes I have are medical-related (the odd one out being a math class), and it's definitely getting more interesting! Financial aid this quarter was very generous, giving me some much-needed breathing room.

ITEM! Any of you who are planning to attend the Portland Comic Book show on November 21st, keep an eye out for me, will you? I'll at least be there for two hours or so, probably around the first couple of hours of the show. I'll at least have my son Tristan in tow with me, and possibly my brother Jeff, too. I'll be looking for some fun cheap comics, and of course some blog fodder, when I'm not saying hi to some of the dealers and guests I only get to see at these things. Since this'll be my first comic show in a LONG time, I'm really looking forward to it! It's also looking very good for me to go at least one day of the next Emerald City Comic-Con!

ITEM! You already know about the Countdown to Halloween already in progress... and you know I do sort of a Countdown to Christmas in December (I have no plans for doing any kind of Thanksgiving-related countdown ever, by the way)... well, I can tell you now that there will be a special 14-day-long feature in February for Valentine's Day! More details on that as it gets closer.

ITEM! The Give-A-Show blog is still on hiatus... what am I waiting for in order to take it out of hiatus again? Well, there's one set that I've not been able to acquire so far, from the early 1970s, which I believe has Josie and the Pussycats on the box. I do have some additional Screen-A-Show cartridges that I'll be doing, too... and some adaptations from View-Master discs... but I want to make sure I'll have some actual Give-A-Show videos before I get to some of the related stuff. I also have a few extra Talking Show Projector sets that I need to work on, but those come with records that I'll need to convert to MP3 first. I've been trying to decide if I'll mail them off to a contact of mine on the East Coast who's ripped records for me in the past, or if I should find someone closer to home who can do it, or if I should just try to find a cheap used record player and figure out a way to do it myself (worse comes to worst, I can always just play the record player and record it to MP3 using the built-in mike on my computer). I keep checking eBay regularly, but the one set I need to complete the 1970s hasn't been showing up!

ITEM! For those of you interested in such things, as I write this, I've been working on future postings for this blog to run in January... some of my other blogs have already got posts prepared into 2012, if you can believe that! Some days, I think if I'm still blogging away when I die, none of my readers will realize something's wrong for months, if not longer!

ITEM! Speaking of future postings -- and this will sound weird, I know -- but I'm already running out of willing participants to be highlighted in the upcoming "Way of the Geek" feature that begins in November! The main focus of "The Way of the Geek" is to interview my fellow geek bloggers (or other geeks who are active in some way in their geekery) to find out more about them. I figured I'd at least manage to get a year's worth of features (52 features, at the rate of one per week), but it's getting difficult to get some people who've promised to respond to get around to it. So, consider this to be a double-plea... first, if you'd be interested in being interviewed for a future "Way of the Geek," please let me know via an email to me at waffyjon at comcast dot net (and tell me just a bit about yourself and why you think you might be an interesting interview... just having a geek blog is good enough for me, you know)... second, in the event that I just plain can't get new interviews going on, I'll need to replace that feature, so if any of you have an idea for a new weekly feature I could do (something that does relate to the stuff I've been posting), feel free to make a suggestion!

That's it for now!

By the 10s: The Three Stooges!

While there were Dell comics with the Stooges (selected Four Color Comics issues, anyway), I'll just be looking at Gold Key's series today!


Issue 10! More after the jump!

Countdown to Halloween: Movie of the Week - The Revenge of Frankenstein!

Trailer and more memorabilia after the jump!

Welcome to the 2010 Countdown to Halloween!

Hopefully I've got this figured out so those of you checking out the Random Acts of Geekery on October 1 will see this as the first post! Anyway...

Welcome to the 2010 Countdown to Halloween at the Random Acts of Geekery! As has been the case for the past several years, I'm joining with an ever-growing list of bloggers who are committed to posting Halloween-related stuff throughout the month of October! You should find a link to the blog somewhere on the left, and you can go directly to the entry with the participating blogs right here!

Those of you who've been around for the past few years have some idea as to what you can expect to find this time around, but I've added some twists to things this year, just to keep it fresh! Here's some of the Halloween-themed features you'll be seeing here, at least one of them each day (as well as the regular geekery, mind you):

Dog of the Geek: This regular feature will be all werewolves and wolfmen this month, as you'll see when you scroll down!

Movie of the Week: This regular Saturday feature should, as is typical, feature monster movies more often than not!

Monster Cards: Last year, I ended up not posting all the monster cards I'd collected photos of, so I'll be looking to finish those off this time around, but there's a twist to that, too, namely...

Horror-Be Humor Monster Cards: This is the set of cards that I designed and created, and all summer long, you've had a chance to try to out-funny me on those! I'll be posting the final versions of these sometime during the month!

Monster Mondays: My regular Monster Monday feature will, of course, continue through the month, although there won't be a bonus "Monster Mondays on Friday" this year, because I've got so much other Halloween themed stuff this time around!

Original Comic Art: As was the case last year, this month, the original comic art is going to all be from horror and monster comics!

Retro-Reviews: This month's Retro-Review of an old comic (in serialized form, probably) will feature a horror title!

Monster Magazines on Wednesdays: Starting this month, instead of posting one article each week from a selected monster magazine or book, I'll be posting the entirety of the mag or book each Wednesday! Yes, you read that right!

Random Videos of Geekery: Most, if not all of this month's Random Videos of Geekery will be Halloween-themed!

I think that should pretty much cover it! But for those of you who don't come here for the monster coolness, there'll still be the regular Random Acts of Geekery features...

Give-A-Show Fridays: Yes, the video repostings from the Give-A-Show Blog will continue here every Friday, and it's going to be Bionic Videos for quite a while, starting with the Kenner Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman sets, and then going on to the Chad Valley stuff from the UK!

By the 10s: Yes, I haven't featured all the By the 10's yet! Just what obscure comics will I be featuring this month? Wait and see!

Puzzle Sunday: This feature is not going away, ever!

Cool Stuff: Same goes for this! All the memorabilia featuring comics characters, Star Trek, and so forth will still be coming your way!

Comics Ads: Yes, the comic book advertisements are finally returning to the Random Acts of Geekery, after being absent for several years! I'll have a few things to say about these as I post 'em!

Children's Book Theatre: More stuff from my collection of genre-related kids books will continue to come your way!

So anyway, I hope that all of these features will be enjoyed by most of you, if not all of you... and have a happy Countdown to Halloween!

Countdown to Halloween: Dog of the Geek - Larry Talbot, aka the Wolfman!

Breed: Werewolf
Original Appearance: “The Wolf Man,” Universal (1941)
Other Appearances: “Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man” (1943), “House of Frankenstein” (1944), “House of Dracula” (1945), “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” (1948)
Biography: Larry Talbot returned to his ancestral home in Wales after some time in America, hoping to reconcile with his father, Sir John Talbot. He meets a local girl who runs an antique shop, from whom he buys a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf, which he is told represents a werewolf. That night, Larry attempts to rescue a friend of the girl's from a wolf attack, kills the wolf, but is bitten in the process. Larry learns it was a werewolf (the son of the gypsy fortuneteller Maleva), and has now become a werewolf himself. As the Wolf Man, Larry prowls the countryside until his father bludgeons him to death with the silver-headed cane. However, some time after his death, Larry's tomb is opened by graverobbers on the night of the full moon, and Larry revives, turning into the Wolf Man once more. Alive again, Larry goes to Frankenstein's castle in search of a scientific cure for his lycanthropy, discovering the frozen Frankenstein monster and meeting the Baroness Elsa Frankenstein. The Baroness has her father's notes, and gives them to Dr. Mannering, who has been tracking Talbot, in hopes that Mannering is able to drain all life from both Larry and the Monster. However, Mannering decides he wants to see the monster at full strength, and revives the monster – on the night of the full moon, unfortunately. The Wolf Man attacks the Monster, only to have the two apparently die in a flood after the town dam is blown up to drown the castle's inhabitants. However, this is not the end of Larry Talbot! Both he and the Monster are discovered frozen soldic in the catacombs of the castle by Dr. Gustav Niemann, who is traveling with his hunchbacked assistant Daniel and a gypsy girl. Larry and the gypsy girl fall in love, but Daniel loves her as well. When Niemann revives the Monster on the night of the full moon (nobody ever checks these things), Larry turns into the Wolf Man again, but is shot by the gypsy girl using a silver bullet, although she perishes as well. The Monster and Niemann end up drowing in quicksand. However, Larry did not permanently die from the silver bullet, as he appears again searching for a cure from Dr. Edelmann, who is also approached by Count Dracula, himself in search of a cure. Larry accidentally discovers the presence of the Frankenstein Monster during an abortive suicide atttempt. Edelmann manages to cure Larry, and Larry falls in love with Edelmann's lovely assistant, but apparently things didn't end well there (the monster was apparently burned to death when the castle is destroyed). Larry later learns of a plot of Count Dracula's involving the Frankenstein monster, and employs the assistance of two railway baggage clerks, Chick Young and Wilbur Grey. During the misadventures that ensue, Larry transforms again into the Wolf Man and battles Dracula, with the two of them apparently perishing when both fall over a balcony and into rocky seas.
Powers: As a werewolf, Larry Talbot has amazing agility and strength, and quite likely stronger senses of smell and hearing. His claws and fangs are able to maim human flesh very easily. Any victim of the Wolf Man's who is not killed by their wounds would become a werewolf themselves. The only vulnerability the Wolf Man has is to silver, although apparently this is not a permanent death. Perhaps if Larry's tomb hadn't been opened, with his corpse exposed to the rays of the full moon, he would have stayed dead; instead, this apparently gave him eternal life, with any injury later given to him by silver only having a temporary effect.
Group Affiliation: None
Miscellaneous: The Wolf Man is the only one of the classic Universal monsters to be portrayed by the same actor in every movie he appeared in. Most of the elements of werewolf lore that appeared in these movies were created by Hollywood. Lon Chaney Jr. would also play a werewolf in a 1959 Mexican film named “La Casa del Terror,” a 1962 episode of Route 66 that also featured Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, and in one scene in 1971's Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. The 2010 “The Wolfman” remake apparently changed quite a bit of the plot, and was not nearly as successful financially as the original (relatively speaking, anyway).

Give-A-Show Fridays: 1973 Six Million Dollar Man (Kenner Version) Slides 1-8!

As presented in two parts!


The rest will follow next Friday! It's a Bionic Month for Give-A-Show Fridays!