09 August 2020

More Smokey Stylin' With Munson Paddock

Continuing from yesterday, we complete the run of Smoke Carter in 1939's Speed Comics from Munson Paddock (here signed as Joe E. Martin). As noted previously, there were only six episodes, usually six pages each. The final episode only has five pages, so perhaps they knew it was on the way out.

I still like the 'smokey' style Munson used which first drew me to the strip. It's even inspired me a bit while prepping the pages. (Whether that'll go anywhere remains to be seen). So let's race along with Smoke and the fire company to face Crime With A Crawl...





"A Brand New Adventure Feature..."

I guess they did know it was the last strip.

page art by Munson Paddock from Speed Comics #s 4-6 (1940)

08 August 2020

Getting Smoke In Your Eyes

I've herded those kittens i call a mind back towards posting, so let us see if TPTB will play along. I'm going to split today's post into two, just to lighten the image load. Working with no hard drive here - OS and files all on USB sticks. Combine that with the hate i've been getting from Blogger lately, and you might realize that i'm rambling mostly from fear-stalling the image uploads.

So, let's push on - and back to visit Munson Paddock once again. This time his artwork appears under the name of Joe E. Martin, but it's Munson. What first drew my eye to Smoke Carter is prominently displayed in the first splash panel. Leaning heavily into fluid brush strokes and stark contrasts, he adopted what could most appropriately be termed a 'smokey' style  for the strip...




Smoke Carter only appeared in the first six issues of Speed Comics. Since there's just a half dozen half-dozen page tales, we'll run them all. But, as noted above, i'm splitting it into two batches to alleviate postings struggles.

Here are the next two stories:



Next Time:
Crime With A Crawl
Death Races The Fire Fiend
and
Flames Lick The Stamp That Seals His Doom

Gotta love that 3rd title.


page art by Munson Paddock from Speed Comics #s 1-3 (1939)

05 August 2020

Good Morning!

Another day in the "land of the free"...





Of course, these days when they talk "Freedom" in the circles of power, they mean it in the same way that Slave Traders used the term when they spoke of abolition as a threat to their freedom.

And you better look close at who's filling in the other side of that equation.

Anyway...

The inner hermit has been rising up with the internet machine issues and actively rebelling against a quick fix. It's even dragged me to spend days without connecting to the net at all. When's the last time you did that?

And it's been odd when i am online since i'm booting this system from a USB stick. All my normal browser info is absent - like bookmarks. How well could you get around these days if you had to type in the URL for every location you want to visit? How many could you  recall properly?

And - DAMN! The default browser on the stick doesn't have add-ons, like AdBlocker. At least half of the sites visited got shut down within seconds as being completely unusable in the raw. That sure helps cut down on the internet time - i'm simply not enough of a submissive bitch to stay on so many of those sites. Do people actually visit more than once?

Perhaps the worst are the ones who seem  to use high school interns to design their dynamic layouts. Ads with different dimension load and the page shuffles, moving the point you're reading elsewhere - go find it, bitch!
Seriously? They put that up on the web and they're not so embarrassed that they immediately pulled it down to avoid the shame?

Or do the site owners only visit with their AdBlock turned on, so they have no clue how broken their own pages are?

ANYWAY (again) ...
The net sure works hard to please my inner hermit these days. They give it lots of reasons to stay offline.

On the comics front, i've been excited about the idea of Probably The Best Superhero Comic Book In The Universe being in development for an animated series. Even though it was published after the big two pushed me out of the comic book market, i still managed to read the first 100 issues. Now i've gone back to re-read them and catch up on the remaining almost 50 issues that i missed. And along the way i discovered that Marvel Team-Up he did with Spider-Man!

I wonder if there are other appearances i missed?

You're all excited for Invincible, too - right?
Or do you just love The Walking Dead?
(They're both written by Robert Kirkman)

Let's go ahead and try to add a few covers here. Maybe the system will be nice and not fight back over just 3 images...


The first cover of Invincible was quite unassuming in its way, with a sweet little teaser line - 

Girls, acne, homework, super-villains.
When you're a teenager, it helps to be
INVINCIBLE


The book hit the ground running with a clear vision and a deep world surrounding our hero. A dozen and a half issues in, they boasted a new tagline the likes of which we hadn't seen since the glory days of Lee & Kirby with their World's Greatest Comics Magazine blurb on the Fantastic Four. And like that old classic, the material under the covers made solid arguments to support their claim of  Probably The Best Superhero Comic Book In The Universe -


I tend to assume that most comic fans are already well familiar with, and have read the run of, Invincible. If not, with the series now going into production, it might be a good time to check and see why so many folks loved this new hero...



There - see?
I managed to drag the brain back around to comics.

I'll see if we can't coax it to do some regular comics & media posts. Maybe i can trick it into watching the sequel to Viy and let you know how that worked out...

stuff by -3-, covers by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley from Invincible #s 1, 18, & 42 (2003, 2005, 2007)

01 August 2020

Back In The USSA

Somebody's been working very hard to get that Dictator's Military Parade he wanted...


Remember way back when we had a government?
Count the felons these days and you'll find we now have a criminal cartel instead.

Remember way back when you could respect the Republicans* even if you didn't agree with them? Back before they openly embraced Facism? (RINO = Republican who doesn't goosestep in proper formation) Back before they became so detached from the real world that they started confusing a Pro-Fact bias with Anti-Conservative?

Remember back when factual reality had value? Back when we were actually capable of solving problems? Now we can't even honestly identify them; too busy warping reality to fit political delusions. 

===

*(I know some will start thinking "HEY! I'm a Republican and I..."
Let me stop you there. No - you're not. That's a control mechanism.
Unless you're an office holder or policy maker, you're not Republican/Democrat/Whatever. 
You're a Voter.  The mark. The rube. The ones they spend millions upon millions of dollars figuring out what to say to get you to march along with them. They get you to say/think you're whatever so you won't have to think any more.
And at that point, you're not really Republican or Democrat or whatever, either.
You're just their bitch.)

stuff by -3- (2020)


30 July 2020

Fake President, Real Whining

System still crippled by the OS thinking it knows more than the user. An all too often occurring flaw these days. (And all too related to the material below) Trying to deal with multi-image posts as normal isn't viable currently. So let's try some more topical, single-image postings, shall we?

Reality keeps creeping up on Fake President. It must be getting hard to keep that bubble that isolates him from the world in which the rest of us live from popping. And that desperation shows more day by day. Like his ongoing rantings already declaring that the upcoming election is obviously going to be Fake because he's in danger of losing. Badly.

So, as usual, factual reality is his enemy...


Hmm...
Y'know - "Bubble boy" might be a fairly apt nickname for our Fake Pres, eh?

stuff by -3- (2020)

29 July 2020

It Yet Lives

Though absent, i'm fine.

The system, on the other hand...

Once again this machine was murdered by it's operating system. Linux seems to like to upgrade the OS invisibly in the background without warning the user, nor seeking permission. Had it asked, i could have told it that power would be disrupted within the hour. But, it doesn't believe that the User should be part of the process of owning and operating their own machine, so...

For the second time this was turned into a brick by OS arrogance. Might as well be using a microsoft based machine. (And, in point of fact, if i can find a good laptop that can run Windows 7, i shall)

Meanwhile, i'm booting off a USB stick while seeking direction and solutions.
If any Linux users know of a distro that does NOT auto-update, do speak up, eh?

I'll be back before too long. Just need to sort out a fix and implement it.

See You Then

25 July 2020

The Yankee Wasn't From Conecticut (or Can't Get Enough Dick (your choice))

Before we dig in to today's Dick Briefer brief, let's make a quick stop at the first page of the first issue (#3, because - comics!) of Boy Comics, from whence today's tales originated. And bring back a logo we haven't seen since the early days of this blog...


We'll not be looking closer at this guy...

(Obviously the victim of steroid shrinkage)

...because who knows what we might see!

But, also - it shows one of the big problems for today's feature. The early issues of Boy Comics are scarce. So much so that i've only ever seen microfiche copies of most of them. Out of his first dozen appearances, i only have 4 paper copies.

So, naturally, those will be the ones we look at today. 

Yankee Longago - The Boy Of To-Day In The Land Of Yesterday, like another Yankee recorded by Sam Clemens and popularized by Bing Crosby, isn't so tightly bound by time as most folks. In his first adventure, instead of leaping back to King Arthur's court, he found himself in the lands of King Cole (who was NOT a merry old soul). He quickly established himself as someone worthy of note by putting out Bad Bimbo's eye with a rubber band & paper clip. Shortly after, he was cranking out bicycles, parachutes, and weapons of war to bring about change in the land before returning home.

However, on his second 'trip in time' he did find his way to Arthur's time - back before Arthur was King. After helping him to pull the sword from the stone, Yankee winds up facing off against an evil Merlin before returning to his own time.

And now we come to his 3rd tale, the first i have on paper. So let's join with Yankee as he meets Al - the Alchemist (and a couple more famous characters)...


A couple issues later, Yankee was meeting up with Napoleon...
 

Having previously corrected "Chris" that he was seeing Brooklyn, not India, Yankee's travels brought him closer to home...
 

Our final tale today brings Ponce De Leon to meet Longago at the Fountain...
 

Between 1942 and 1946, Dick Briefer did about two dozen of Yankee's adventures.
I'll see how many more i can dig up on paper.

page art by Dick Briefer from Boy Comics #s 5, 7, 12, & 14 (1942, 1943, 1944)