Super Clothes #10 - More PJs

Here are more pajamas endured by kids and grandkids at our house.

It's hard to tell, but there's a pair of black long pajama bottoms here.

The above size 8 set is from a concern identified as PCA on the label.

This size 10-12 set, with the same central image, is from a company called Allison.

This yellow set which gives away the Super Secret is labeled size 7.

I hope you got some super swag to wear to dreamland!  See you on Monday to begin a month of compilations!

  

In Other News ...

Of course, we're going to see the new Superman movie on opening night.  But cast your memories back a couple of decades ... 

Back in 2006, Superman Returns was the "new" Superman movie.  While there was a lot of good in it, there was just too much creepy x-ray spying and other stuff going on.  However ...

Somehow our local rag heard about my status as a big Superman fan.  I took a reporter and a photog on a tour of the Fortress of Markitude and ended up on the front page!

Above is the article as scanned from the June 28, 2006 Oklahoman.  Following are pix taken for the article.

Here I am showing off some issues in the Comics Closet.

This is a copy of Superman #158, which introduced (among other things) Nightwing and Flame Bird.

The above photo WAS NOT in the article, but it's me in 1963 with the same issue of Superman #158, when it was new.

Here I am with an (empty) box of wonderful Superman processed cheese food!

Here's a separate photo of the box, which can be studied in depth here.

See you at the movies!

  

Cards from the Past

Yup, these pieces of correspondence were part of the commercial lifeblood of both the periodical world and the post office.

This is a 1978 sweepstakes come-on from RD.  No, we never won anything from them.

We were with Cox from when they first hung cable in OKC (around 1979????) until around 2000, when their incessant rate hikes chased us away.  We were NEVER late in our payments, however inflated.

I have several of these puppies.  This one is addressed to "contest entrant," but I pestered those poor folks at The Twilight Zone Magazine at least half-a-dozen times.

Have you ever read a nicer rejection letter?

An aside to my snide friends:  I don't keep EVERYTHING.  I used all of these as bookmarks.

See ya Monday!

  

Worlds of Tomorrow!

As a longtime member of the defunct STAR OKC, the alive-and-well Soonercon and the Future Society of Oklahoma, as you might imagine I'm a sci-fi fan. Here's a VERY top-of-the-pile survey of a few concepts of some might-come-to-pass Worlds of Tomorrow.

Worlds of Tomorrow

            After the end of Star Trek’s run, Gene Roddenberry pitched several projects to the TV networks—to be honest, it was one idea, continually redressed. All were set on a future Earth, in the aftermath of a planetwide war. The TV-movie Genesis II aired in 1973, and starred a 20^th-Century man awakening in 2133 in an Earth populated by splintered outposts of mankind. A reworked version, Planet Earth, aired in 1974. A third telefilm based on the concept was broadcast in 1975. Its title—Brave New World.

            Miranda is the daughter of the sorcerer Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. When some mariners are shipwrecked on their barren island, she begs her father to save them. She eventually marries one of the refugees, the prince of Naples. In the play’s final scene, she addresses the crowd who is celebrating the nuptials:

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't.

            Some pop groups have given the phrase “Brave New World” a sarcastic spin. Jimmy and the Boys’ 1981 “Brave New World” narrates a society populated by genderless workers whose mindless activity feeds the machines of progress. “Brave New World” by the Tender Violent Chords, from 1982, looks forward to spaceships and satellite eyes that watch the world without emotion.

            Some “new worlds” aren’t that great. Aldous Huxley’s dystopian look at a fascist future, the 1932 novel Brave New World, was a satirical riposte against the utopian dreams of H.G. Wells. In the future of Huxley’s tale, bottle babies and strict social castes are the norm. Technology’s sole aim is to keep the lower classes occupied so that the upper castes may indulge their government-sanctioned fancies. Huxley’s satirical title was a direct reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

 Among the music groups or artists with releases titled Brave New World:

• Iron Maiden (heavy metal, 2000)
• Toyah (new wave, 1982)
• Styx (rock, 1999)
• Moskwa TV (synth-pop, 1987)
• Fuzzy Logic (jazz-funk, 1995)
• New Model Army (punk, 1985)
• Hawklords (space rock, 2018)
• David Essex (pop, 1978)
• The Bongos (new wave, 1985)
• Genetic Control (2005, punk)
• DDT (alternative, 1983)
• Ana Christensen (alternative. 1990)
• Steve Miller Band (rock, 1969)

       Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 foresaw a future in which independent thought is stifled through the suppression of books and learning. Bradbury originally said that the book was conceived in reaction to the McCarthy hearings’ chilling effect on free speech. In 2007, he revised his opinion to say that the book’s allegory also applies to mass media’s effect in reducing consumers’ interest in reading and literature.

            Perhaps the best-known tale of a future fascist state is George Orwell’s 1984, the tale of a metaphorical boot crushing a human face—forever. It’s a world full of surveillance and government-run everything. Who would want a world in which your TV watches you? Hello, Alexa!

            Some of the current organizations that claim to be working on a wonderful future world are the World Future Society; the World Future Council (offices in Hamburg, London, and Geneva); and the Future Worlds Center (based in Cyprus). Don’t forget the Association of Professional Futurists, or the World Futures Studies Federation, founded in 1973. Or our own Future Society of Oklahoma!

             Plenty of pop songs look ahead in time. Here are only a few: “Song for a Future Generation” by the B-52’s; “This Used to Be the Future” by the Pet Shop Boys; “The Future that Never Was” by Powerman 5000; “A Better Future” by David Bowie; and two songs called “Children of the Future.” One’s from the Steve Miller Band; the other is by Bloc Party.

See you on Thursday!

  

Still EERIE After all These Years

Earlier in the year I posted the comics content of Eerie #15, from June 1968.  Now it's time for more fun from that representative fright frolic:  the ads!

I always wondered if those masks could be as cool on MY FACE as the pix in the ad made it appear.  Back in the Sixties, $34 buck was a big chunk o' change, roughly equivalent to $300 today.

Nowadays I can say I have heard the contents of most of these records.  Some still stand up as chilling or evocative today.

I never saw that Blazing Combat mag.  I always figured that the implied competition between Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie was an attempt to make fans buy both and compare 'em.

Pow!  Zam!  I might have read an issue or two of Screen Thrills, but I bet a lot of the "thrills" have leaked out of these properties over time.

See you Monday!

  

Influential Appearances

Here are the close-up images and brief notes for the final cards of my decked-out desktop.

Bizarro #1 wants to know why he didn't see a doorbell.

Somebody ratted the Wolf Man's bouffant, it looks like!

We sure liked watching Magnum, PI in the 80s.  The fun was increased when our oldest came along.  When the theme music came on, Matthew went into what he called his Crazy Dance, which involved spinning around, wiping out, and bouncing off the furniture.  Wish I had a home movie of that!

Chris Reeve was a great Superman.  Too bad the corporate suits shoehorned him into the third and fourth movies, yuk!

Of course you all know Mazeppa hisself!?!?

Joni Mitchell's voice, songs, and oddball guitar stylings shot me through the heart in the Seventies, and beyond.

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it!

See you on Monday!

  

The Bottom But Not of the Barrel!

Here are half the card on the bottom row of my laptop desktop, with notes.

The combination of studied anarchy, elucidation, joyful ethnic humor, and the wonderful Margaret Dumont (not pictured) make the Brothers Marx some of my idols.

Franz Liszt wrote music passionate and/or rational.  He's also my idol for his stupendous piano transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies, played revelatorily by Cyprien Katsaris. 

Who could fail to be charmed and inspired by this Neal Adams depiction of Supergirl, from the cover of Action #373.

Mr Waverly, the head of the New York HQ of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

Two robots everybody should know!

Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog stood for goodness and rightness, especially against Crabby Appleton.

See you on Thursday for the final installment of this tour of these formative impressers on my character!

  

Goin' Wildey!

You would too, if you got to read an interview with Jonny Quest creator Doug Wildey!

Note the implication on the first page's intro that "the age of 63" is a super-antique, geezerish age.

It's either a slip of Wildey's memory or a typo ... but JQ music director was Hoyt Curtin, not "Cartin."

This is from the May 15, 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes, number 95.

See you on Thursday, fellow Questians!