Chalkboard Drawings: The “JLA, Part One” edition

I draw a picture of myself on my classroom’s chalkboard everyday. I collect those pictures as camera phone photos and post them on Sundays. See the rest here.

Thrift Store Finds: HPB quarter bins

I did a little digging in my Half-Price Books’ quarter bins recently and pulled out about $6 dollars worth of DC Comics from the recent past.

Bookery Fantasy Finds!

Here’s a comix shopping recommendation from me to you, if you’re ever in the greater Dayton area. Bookery Fantasy, man. BF is a store specializing in all the things I love: comics, paperbacks, and magazines new and old as well as gaming supplies (which I don’t care about so much, but you might!).

The store is so massive, it’s TWO stores, across the street from one another. A weird, fun shopping experience for sure. One of my favorite things about BF is the massive “discount warehouse” set-up, which includes an entire basement full of single issue comic books for a buck apiece. I spent an hour and a half digging through their archives and I barely made a dent… but the above picture includes most of my spoils.

Thrift Store Finds: Cincy Comicon Finds!

I’ve been posting stuff about the Cincy Comicon on my Tumblr all week and I thought I’d take today to post some of my comic book finds. Most people going to comic conventions have agendas they like to follow. Some folks are there to cosplay. Others are all about buying toys or art prints.

My agenda is to dig through longboxes and find cheap comics, both new and old. If I’m being honest, I was a bit disappointed with this con in terms of my finds – I try to concentrate on finding far-out weird stuff and there weren’t many of that to be had. Still, I did manage to bring a ton of funnybooks home with me, so I guess I can’t complain too much. Here’s what I picked up.

odds & ends

I don’t think I mentioned it, but I’m currently in Northeast Ohio with my family; we’re visiting Ellen’s parents for a few days. I’m normally able to “appropriate” a wireless Internet connection from one of the neighbors around her, but nothin’ doing this go-around. As such, I’m on Alice & Ken’s big old computer. I apologize in advance for any typos.

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While I’m here in NE Ohio, I took an afternoon to walk around downtown Kent. I’ve driven through Kent a few times, but never had the opportunity to check the place out. It’s a fairly standard college town, replete with dilapidated concert space, several bars, and to my happiness, a nice sized used book store, Last Exit Books. I always enjoy used book stores in college towns, because often college students get a bit silly with their book collections and decide, in a fit of desperation, to sell their prized books for beer money. I did something similar with my record collection when I was a soon-to-be college Freshman.

Anyhow, I wasn’t looking for any big purchases (truth be told, I’m kind of light in the wallet until payday) but Last Exit did have a fair selection of used comic books, and I bought a couple.

Now, I picked these three books for three different reasons. Lethargic Comics is a superhero spoof book I enjoyed quite a bit when I was heavily invested in superhero comic books. Prez is (I guess) a spin-off of the first issue of The Sandman I ever bought. Father & Son just looked like the type of alternative humor book that doesn’t get made very often these days. Three random picks, three random dollars.

I was a little surprised to find out, after getting back to my in-laws, that the three books also share another thing in common: All three books came out in 1995. I don’t know what this says about me, or the comics, or my taste, but I thought the randomness was pretty fun.

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Movies. I saw some movies this past week.

Super 8 was a fun flick; I liked the way it paid homage to the “days gone by” of Spielbergian kids movies. It hit all the notes well: ragtag bunch of kids, single parent woes, military involvement; I could go on but I won’t. I wish it had done a little less benedition toward those old Amblin flicks and struck out on its’ own a bit more… but like I said, I liked the movie.

Green Lantern was a mixed bag. I should say right off, I enjoyed the movie. I thought it was fine. It didn’t blow my socks off, but not many of these superhero movies do. I didn’t like Iron Man the same amount as everyone else, nor was I completely wowed by Spider-Man when it first came out. GL was OK. That being said, this devistatingly brutal piece on Topless Robot zeroes on exactly EVERY flaw the movie has (and there are many). Well worth reading if you’ve seen the flick.

Christmas Comics Cavalcade: Christmas with the Super-Heroes Special #2

Alright, here it is. This is the whole reason I wanted to take the month of December to write about Christmas comics. Ladies and gentlemen

Christmas with the Super-Heroes Special #2, published in 1988 by DC Comics.