Normally, this is a lightly-annotated but otherwise random collection of images of comic book and rock 'n' roll album covers. Today's edition shifts just a little for a cavalcade of rock magazine and paperback covers instead. Consider me a Renaissance blogger.
One of the many prizes I scored in the dealers' room at
DC Comics' 1976
Super-DC Con in New York was this paperback novel from 1966. Produced as tie-in product for the immensely popular
Batman TV series starring
Adam West,
Batman Vs. 3 Villains Of Doom is slightly less camp than the TV show, and seems a bit closer to its original comics inspiration. According to DC Wikia, the novel incorporates three Batman comic book stories from 1947-1950, and places them within a framing device of
The Joker,
The Penguin, and
The Catwoman competing for the Tommy (as in Tommy gun), the underworld equivalent of an Oscar for, y'know, best--or worst--bad guy. Listen, criminals may be a superstitious and cowardly lot, but they crave validation just like regular folks do.
You like me! You really like me! HA-HA-HA-HAAAA! Waughh! Meow! Ahem. I haven't re-read this in many years, but I recall that it was a fun and entertaining pulp-lite superhero book. Credited author "Winston Lyon" is as fictional as
Alfred and
Commissioner Gordon; the novel was written by
William Woolfolk, prolific veteran author of many novels, comic books, and screenplays.
Batman Vs. 3 Villains Of Doom was only the second prose novel to star a DC Comics superhero, following
George Lowther's
The Adventures Of Superman in 1942.
Creem magazine was one of the all-time great rock 'n' roll rags, and it will be the subject of a near-future edition of my rock magazine reminiscence series
He Buys Every Rock 'n' Roll Book On The Magazine Stands. (My series itself was inspired by a recent invitation from
Devorah Ostrov and former
Creem regular
John Mendelssohn for me to contribute to
Reet, a new online magazine in the proud and plowed
Creem tradition.) This fairly reverent 1987 special
Creem edition dedicated to
The Monkees may seem an anomaly for the notoriously snarky
Creem because...well, because it
is an anomaly for the notoriously snarky
Creem. But nor was it a unique anomaly, as the perpetrators of
Creem weren't exactly above chasin' a quick buck by pandering to a perceived mass pop market. Hell, my first
Creem mag was a 1977 spotlight on
The Bay City Rollers, and I kinda wish I still had a copy of that. That said, I know that
Bill Holdship,
Creem's editor in 1987, was and remains a Monkees fan himself, and his guidance produced this lovely souvenir document of resurgent Monkeemania in the '80s.
This I still have, and I'm keepin' it. One regrets The Monkees never did a
Creem Profiles Boy Howdy! bit...did they?
Harlan Ellison was my favorite writer when I was a teenager, and no other author has ever really challenged his position at the top of my literary pantheon. Ellison was an enormous influence on my writing, and on my attitude toward writing. His essay collections (in particular
The Glass Teat and
The Other Glass Teat) were as essential to me as his fiction. I don't remember how I started on my path to Ellison Wonderland. My first exposure to his work was the time-traveling
Star Trek episode "The City On The Edge Of Forever," which I adored (although Ellison despised the changes made to his work in the televised version). I saw his name in comic books, as co-writer (with
Roy Thomas) of "Five Dooms To Save Tomorrow!" in
The Avengers # 101, and as inspiration for a character called Harlequin Ellis in
Justice League Of America # 89 (written by
Mike Friedrich). My friend
Bob Gray may have recommended I check out Ellison's books. My first was
Paingod And Other Delusions, a collection of short stories that included Ellison's masterful "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman." I was hooked immediately, and set out to accumulate as many Ellison books as I could, as fast as I could. I saw Ellison speak at
Syracuse University around 1976 or so, and I was riveted as he read his then-unpublished short story "Hitler Painted Roses." After the lecture, Ellison autographed my copy of his
No Doors, No Windows, and playfully tried to hook me up with the diminutive co-ed standing in line in front of me. Um...that's
not why Ellison's my favorite writer. But it didn't hurt.
Shortly after I left Buffalo to return to Syracuse in 1987, I suddenly became a bigger, more devoted fan of
The Flamin' Groovies. I don't know exactly why, but it grew out of my increased attention to
Goldmine, the bi-weekly tabloid for record collectors. I'd begun freelancing for
Goldmine in late '86, the start of what would be a twenty-year run as a
GM stringer. I started ordering sundry delights from
Midnight Records, one of
Goldmine's regular advertisers. And again, I have no idea why I abruptly fixated on the Groovies at this time, though I think their track "First Plane Home" may have played a role in my Groovies revelation. It wasn't like I didn't already appreciate the group; I'd owned their
Shake Some Action and
Now albums for years, and absolutely loved them. Either just before or shortly after my move to Syracuse, I finally grabbed a copy of 1979's
Jumpin' In The Night, the final Flamin' Groovies LP released up to that point. "First Plane Home" freakin' blew me away, just as "Shake Some Action" had done years before, so I guess I
do know what sparked my 1987 embrace of the Groovies. And now I needed more! Midnight sold me an Australian fan magazine,
Flamin' Groovies Quarterly, a new (!!!) Groovies album called
One Night Stand, a CD of live performances (
Groove In), and an all-Groovies edition of one of my fave rave rock reads,
Bucketfull Of Brains.
Bucketfull Of Groovies filled me in on the back story for what had become one of my all-time favorite bands. This was an invaluable resource when I interviewed the Groovies'
Cyril Jordan for
Goldmine in 1992.
1970-'71. I hated sixth grade.
Hated it. About the only good thing I can say about sixth grade is that it was slightly better than seventh grade, the way shingles is better than leprosy. The only other good thing about sixth grade was
The Pigman, a novel by
Paul Zindel. My reading teacher Mrs. Mott read the book to us in class; oddly enough, I don't remember any of us ever having the book in front of us while she read, which seems strange for a reading class. I was already reading at a high school level, so I betcha I could have followed along acceptably. The book was fascinating, sad, emotional, unforgettable. I believe I had another class in a subsequent year that also studied
The Pigman, and I read it on my own at that time. My original well-worn copy is long, long gone. I replaced it with a fresh copy a few years back, when my own daughter was entering high school. She declined the option of reading it herself. But I owe myself the pleasure of re-visiting it. (A pretty classmate named Diana was the third and final only good thing about sixth grade, but she never noticed me anyway.)
When I started my recent look back at rock mags of days gone by, a few friends mentioned
Rock Scene as a favorite. I bought the occasional issue of
Rock Scene in the late '70s/early '80s, and browsed through many more of 'em on the racks at
The Liftbridge Bookstore in Brockport. But
Rock Scene never meant as much to me as
Creem or
Bomp!,
Trouser Press or
The Pig Paper, nor even the distrusted
Rolling Stone. In retrospect, I probably should have dug
Rock Scene more than I did. Really, the magazine was like a more specifically rock-oriented version of vintage
16 or
Tiger Beat, focused far more on pictures than on text. There's nothing wrong with that, and you'd think my
uber-pop sensibilities would have taken to that like a
High Times reader takes to chocolate chip cookies. I recall seeing an uncharacteristically snide remark within a
Rock Scene piece about
KISS that would have been right at home in
Creem, and maybe there was more of that if I'd been paying attention. And
Rock Scene did feature
The Sex Pistols and
The Ramones, and I was for damned sure in favor of
that! I don't think I kept any of my few
Rock Scene purchases from the time, but I've picked up a couple of old issues at record shows in recent years. My
Rock Scene fan friends were right; I was wrong.
Flea markets and used bookstores. From these fertile fields, I amassed a decent collection of paperback novels based on the '60s TV spy show
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. I don't believe I ever saw the show when it originally aired, but I certainly knew of it and its protagonists,
Napolean Solo and
Illya Kuryakin. My first
Man From U.N.C.L.E. adventure was a
Big Little Book (
The Calcutta Affair) 'roundabout fourth grade. In the mid '70s, I saw a film called
The Spy With My Face on
CBS' late movie.
The Spy With My Face was an episode of
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., expanded with extra footage for a 1965 theatrical release. Hey, reduce, reuse, and recycle! I loved it. Although I started snagging the paperbacks soon thereafter, I confess I've yet to read one. But I still have them, and I'll get to them one day. One of the many great things about books is that they have no expiration date. I'm told the
Man From U.N.C.L.E. books also hold the distinction as the first resource to spell out the full name of U.N.C.L.E.'s evil adversary,
THRUSH. We knew from the TV series about the United Network Command for Law Enforcement; it was the novels that suggested the bad guys were the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity. Hence, y'know, bad guys. I've since seen most (all?) of the TV series episodes as reruns. And I'd be remiss if I didn't make a brief mention of actress
Yvonne Craig, later to become TV's
Batgirl, steamin' up the spy business on
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Although Yvonne Craig did appear on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series, this scene did not appear on the TV show. Somehow I sense you're not surprised. This is from One Spy Too Many, a 1966 feature film expansion of a two-part episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Craig was not even in the original TV two-parter, but was in an earlier episode. With her clothes on.
The first punk record I ever heard was "God Save The Queen" by The Sex Pistols. The Ramones would ultimately mean a great deal more to me, but the Pistols were also important, and I still enjoy blastin' "God Save The Queen," "Pretty Vacant," "Holiday In The Sun," and "No Feelings," among others.
Punk magazine's document of the Pistols' American tour and messy demise was the cover feature on either the first or second issue of
Punk I ever owned; I think I picked this up before I purchased the previous issue, which cover-featured
The Dictators. The Sex Pistols issue was
Punk's first as a slick magazine, transitioning from its previous tabloid format. This issue earned bonus points with me for also covering The Bay City Rollers, though apparently many
Punk readers were simply horrified to see the Rollers in a punk zine. I thought
Punk was a terrific, terrific magazine, and I regret that I missed most of its run. I did snag an earlier issue (with a
John Holmstrom drawing of
Joey Ramone on the cover, and hilarious interviews with
David Johansen and the hapless
Dorian Zero contained therein), and a subsequent issue starring Joey Ramone and
Debbie Harry in the magazine-length photo-funny "Mutant Monster Beach Party."
Punk was gone too soon. I own two different retrospectives of the magazine, one hardcover and one softcover, and neither gives me what I
really want: a comprehensive reprinting of every single page of every single issue of
Punk.
NOW!!!
My addiction to
superpulp paperbacks in the '70s prompted me to pursue spinner-rack reprints of decades-old adventures starring the likes of
The Shadow,
Doc Savage,
Tarzan,
The Spider,
The Avenger,
Operator 5,
Conan the Barbarian,
Ellery Queen, and
The Lone Ranger, plus novelizations of '30s comic strips starring
Flash Gordon. I wish there were even more, and I wish I'd picked up the then-new
Vampirella novels a couple of years later. My favorite series was probably
The Phantom. Like the Flash Gordon books, these were prose adaptations of old newspaper strips, and I consumed them with great delight. Their covers were perfectly prototypical '70s era pulp paperback fare, colorful kindred spirits to the other willfully-garish drugstore potboilers, even with a costumed hero mixed in with the prerequisite sex and violence. The cover of
The Veiled Lady is a prime example, as The Ghost Who Walks deals hot lead from his firearm while cradling and protecting a buxom damsel in distress. My favorite Phantom novel was the debut entry,
The Story Of The Phantom, which seemed more complete and accomplished than its sequels, but I enjoyed every one I read. And I read a few:
The Story Of The Phantom,
The Slave Market Of Mucar,
The Scorpia Menace,
The Veiled Lady,
The Mysterious Ambassador,
The Hydra Monster, and
Killer's Town, with
The Goggle-Eyed Pirates a more recent internet purchase. For those who came in late.
I'm tempted to suggest that
Hot Wacks Quarterly didn't know whether it wanted to be a rock magazine or a girlie magazine, but I think its editors knew precisely what they were going for here.
Hot Wacks specialized in coverage of bootleg recordings, but wasn't above the use of rock-related cheesecake photos to help sales. Even so, the magazine never connected for me. I owned two or maybe three issues, realized my indifference, and moved on.
 |
| The inverse of Hot Wacks Quarterly: The Beatles in Oui. |
Hey, I had fun doing this! There will be more comics and LP covers to come, of course, but maybe we'll look at some paperbacks and rock mags again, too.
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