About five years back I caught some fortunate breaks which increased what the beancounters would call my “discretionary income.” Being a sober and pragmatic middle-aged man, I used that windfall to chase down various childhood artifacts of deep personal significance. This was not some wild spree, however. Taking a page from my renewed record collecting, […]

The goal of my ongoing binding project was to create durable and easier-to-shelve collections of funnybooks which, for various reasons, haven’t and most likely wouldn’t see an official trade paperback or hardcover release. Most of these fall into one or two year runs from a single title — Atari Force, Young Heroes in Love, the […]

Apparently today marks thirty-four years since the debut issue of the post-Legends “Bwah Ha Ha” incarnation of the Justice League. It’s a day I remember well, though for more personal reasons than its significance within funnybook history. My paternal grandmother had moved out of our house the month before, returning us to nuclear family status […]

My plans to come roaring back after the Halloween Countdown didn’t pan out, but the time wasn’t entirely wasted. The world is awash in ill-conceived takes forged from bullshit and claims of unearned authority. Instead of joining that yowling chorus, I’ve decided it’s better to speak only when I have something to say. (On this […]

Of all my cherished spooky season stand-bys, nothing comes remotely close to the November 1982 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine. Despite the cover date, the issue was magazine’s second annual Halloween special, and special it certainly. It’s pages sport an embarrassment of riches to remind readers what a singular moment it truly was. There’s Stephen […]

The weekend following the arrival of my unique treasure, I experienced a particularly violent sneeze which dislodged a small fragment of tissue in my left eye, causing a half-moon shaped blind spot right in the center of my vision. It wasn’t anything serious, but just another one of the little nightmares that become the norm […]

I’m not what form the Halloween Countdown will take this year. A deadly plague is sweeping a world already pushed to the brink of hysteria. Meanwhile, your humble narrator has spent the last six months walled up in his ancient New England manse, surrounded by dusty artifacts of bygone ages. His body still suffers the […]

One of the perks of taking an extended hiatus is having actually new developments to talk about upon returning — — things such as the above object of beauty. The collection is not a hoax or imaginary story. Nor, I regret to inform you, is it the product of DC’s trade collections department coming to […]

I started this feature without having a coherent plan,just a nostalgia-tinted swirl of memories unearthed after flipping through some periodicals from the year in question. Now that the project is done, I’m still not sure what I was trying to accomplish, much less whether or not I succeeded in doing so. 1983 was the year […]

Even as my fifth-grade classmates rushed to put childish things behind them, 1983 saw me still enthralled by the plastic treasures of the toy aisle. It’s something I’d hold onto up until my final year of junior high, for a cluster of related reasons. One, I was a shy and awkward nerd who wasn’t in […]