Enjoy It, No Matter How You Spell It

Hanukkah is the most popular spelling.
Chanukah is second. There is a list with at least 16 spellings for the holiday. 

Sometimes it's simpler to just say it with pictures...

No matter how you spell it, today is the first day of Hanukkah for 2019. Like Easter, one needs to be a scholar or own a calendar to know when to celebrate each year. It's a major religious holiday known to most in this country, but not everyone who isn't Jewish knows just what they're celebrating.

Fortunately, it's not hard to find out -

Hanukkah (the book, not the holiday) was written by Miriam Schlein and illustrated by Katherine Kahn to teach children about the holiday. Let's read along and learn with them, shall we? (My apologies for the small size and quality of the scans - resources were quite limited.)

And now you've got the basics.

Umm - okay.

There might still be a thing or two to learn...

page art by Katherine Kahn from Hanukkah and Chris Sheridan from Motorcycle Samurai-The All-Star Hanukkah Special (1983, 2016)

Stan Lee Vs. Spider-Man! Who Would Win?

As one might have noticed from last evening's post, i went digging for a few more Un-Comics. This time, it wasn't random digging - i was fair certain there were riches in this vein. I just hadn't opened it up in quite some time. 

Where was i going digging? Into Blip!

We already looked a bit at Pizzazz! so Blip! was only natural, and overdue. Blip!, like Pizzazz!, was a magazine published by Marvel Comics. This one was aimed at Video Game Players back in 1983. One might expect a range of years there, but it lasted only 7 issues, all covered dated '83.

In my digging i found 3 Un-Comics to reward my search - and a nice bonus tie-in to one of them. The third of those, from the final issue of Blip!, we saw in the post mentioned above.

The first comes from the first issue and appears to be the first ever Mario Brothers comic - a Triple First bonus -

If anyone knows of a Mario strip prior to '83, let us know.

The second (and final?) of the three is just a bit more odd than the other two. You see, that was when the Spider-Man game from Parker Brothers came out. So, Spidey got the cover -

Yes, those are the actual game graphics on the screen.

Inside, we get the Big Match...

 ...Spidey Vs. Stan!...

Those kids had some serious bragging rights back in those days, and that was before Stan got to be so well known and loved as a cultural figure. 

The article was followed directly by our Spider-Man un-comic, with art by Jazzy John Romita! - also featuring the video game -

art by Bob Camp and John Romita for Blip #s 1 & 2 (1983)

PROOF! Video Games STOP Violence!

Well, what a surprise.

Regular readers may know that the Universe seems to hate the idea of me doing artwork. But, i've been setting up the desktop system and updating software to start doing some render work to create photos from which to paint.

Of course, that means that this weekend the machine suddenly started shutting down randomly for no discernible reason. Not overworking or overheating - shutting down while idling.

Arrgh.

While I fight with that, here's a short Un-Comic featuring The Hulk. Dan Koeppel and Al Milgrom offer a counter argument to the parents decrying video games and violence -

Remember when the Mayor of New York was entertaining? That's a bigger indicator of how much time has passed than rolling out the big CRT monitor on a cart.
 

page art by Al Milgrom for ...? (1983)

(source tomorrow)

Saturday Solutions - Q-Quiz

Here are the answers to yesterday's quiz, coming to us via Q*bert's Quazy Questions:

pages from Q*bert's Quazy Questions (1983)

And How Was YOUR Day?

Because mine...?

That sound, with the accompanying flash of light, erupted from the main computer system this morning. (Yesterday morning, at the time this post goes live.)
Either it had an origin and is in some embryonic hibernation state, or the poor critter died a hard death.
And no telling if it took the data on the drive with it.

That was just the morning...

My standard medical monitoring was so badly out of specs that i've gone from every six weeks to now being tested every fortnight. (Which is going to create a huge spike in my shoe wearing hours per month!)
We won't even get into how badly the government has screwed things up for my upcoming procedures. And that's before the current screw-the-populace rampage.

The day did not dramatically improve from there.

But none of that affects you, except for the death of the computer. All my archives of material gathered for the blog are there. Much of it has been backed up on external drives, but they're too big for this ancient beast to fathom what it's looking at. So none of it can currently be accessed. The technology gap also prohibits use of the scanner. This old beast doesn't speak the modern lingo, and can't communicate with it.
(Let's not get into how ancient this machine is. Let's just leave it at the fact that it has a single core processor.)

But, i do keep an ancient version of Photoshop on hand, so it can at least do some basic prep work. And i'm hoping that a couple of the old external drives are small enough for this machine to read them. That will enable access to some older back ups. And there are a few bits hanging around on this system and some of the transfer sticks. (The main sys was a secure system - only sneaker net connections) So, we'll still be getting some posts of some sort. But certainly no insane sprees like two days ago. (On the other hand, that did leave at least one more Caza story prepped & ready) Best guess is perhaps two weeks before a replacement system is up and running. In the meantime, we carry on.

Okay. Enough explanation and ramble. This post goes off to the queue, and i go crawl to the back of the cave.

We'll see how badly the computer explosion burned my brain and psyche when i wake.

oh, come on! You know who that page is from, right? Simonson & Workman ... you know that already, sure you do! from Thor # 337 (1983)

...This Funny Thing Called Spock

Before we proceed to our Tale of Trek, let's pause to take a look at Star Trek comics in the USA at that time. The year was 1973. Star Trek had been cancelled for 4 years, but the audience was continuing to grow around the syndicated show. The first movie was a half decade away, an animated series was in production from Filmation, and everybody was ramping up to sing Money!*
At Gold Key, we were getting new Star Trek adventures, but something seemed just a bit off about them...

You might notice that Captain Kirk looks rather un-Kirk-like. This is no fault of the artist, as he had never seen the show and the reference photos sent to him were of Jeffery Hunter - Captain Pike from the first pilot. This was a problem that undercut the book on a routine basis, even when playing with concepts like this which would not come into play until The Next Generation aired over a decade later.

Meanwhile, over in the UK...

Yeah, that Enterprise might spark more than a bit of concern. Inside, however, we find Eisner Award winner Jim Baikie is on, as far as i can determine, one of his first professional gigs. And he has clearly seen the show and knows the actors.
Even if the colourist is unaware of certain little things, like the meaning of tunic colours and the curse of the Red Shirt...

...but not even a red shirt can stop Captain Kirk. (Though Spock is doing all the heavy lifting)

Meanwhile, 10 years later, back at StarFleet...

Yeah...    This is gonna get confusing.

What Is This Thing Called Spock? by Jim Baikie for TV21 (1973), Star Fleet by Mike Noble for Look-In (1983)

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