Where the Heck is this? Mystery Forest...

Sometimes I like to play a game called 'Where the Heck is this?' So people...what do you think. Clue 1. Not Loch Ness. Clue 2. Did you ever watch the Gerry Anderson TV Show UFO?

T

From My Bookshelf

It is a particular pleasure to read a book by a favourite* author that you've never read before...in my case I've managed it twice in two months. Firstly with Roger Zelazny's non-SF book The Deadman's Brother...which could almost be a precursor to The Da Vinci Code since it is a tale of art and international Vatican related skullduggery...and secondly with Philip Jose Farmer's Lord Tyger - I am almost at the end of this and now reading at a snail's pace because I don't want it to end. Two copies of this have languished disgracefully on my shelf for years - but now it might just be my fave Farmer novel. The cover is by Richard Clifton-Dey who I know best as the cover artist on the Mayflower Six Million Dollar Man books Cyborg and Operation Nuke.

* Yes US readers favorite has a U in it in England.

The Ghost of Christmas Past 2

Back in 1974, Due to the power of blanket advertising (on the back of my weekly B&W reprint Marvel Comics) I knew that the Marvel Treasury Special - Superhero Holiday Grab-Bag would be the perfect accompaniment to my Christmas, like cranberry sauce and turkey. Even though Marvel had coyly avoided using the word 'Christmas' on the cover, the surfeit of holly wreathing some of my favourite heroes (Spider-Man, The Thing, The Hulk) smelt strongly and evocatively of the festive season. In the UK we still don't opt to say 'Happy Holidays' - afterall, what could be less offensive than Christmas? And I've even known Sikhs who had Christmas presents as children (from their parents) and Jewish friends and co-workers who seemed to send a heck of a lot of Christmas cards. Nearly twenty years ago when I worked for the Attorney General I remember that he received a Christmas card from the CIA. So Christmas really is for everyone...even the CIA.

Pester power failed in 1974 and I didn't get the Holiday Grab-Bag - although I did get the rather more expensive Avengers annual for 1975 (Don Heck, Avengers and X-Men versus Magneto) so I can hardly complain. Those annuals were printed with a garish almost fluorescent ink which emitted a strong smell which filled the whole room you were reading in. The odour has almost gone now, but if I crush my nose against the pages of that annual and breathe deeply it's as good as a time machine- I'm straight back to 1974. I recall that both publications had Captain America on the cover and I had no idea who he was. But I thought he had a cool costume.

I finally picked up the Grab-Bag at a London comic fair in the 1990's. That allows me to give you the Christmas greeting from the back cover which is a 180 reverse view of the heroes leaping through the holly wreath .

May you have PEACE ON EARTH and GOOD WILL TOWARD MEN...UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

It is December 1969 in this picture and so I am three and half years old. It was taken in the Co-op Department Store on Parliament Street in Nottingham. As part of the queueing system that year you took a ride on a rocket ship to Santa's Grotto on the moon. So in this picture I think I am on the moon. The white cap is my complimentary Nottingham Co-op Astronaut hat and I still have the button badge I am wearing on my lapel. I was still in a push chair and my push chair couldn't fit on the rocket so the Co-op ladies wheeled it around to the Moon Grotto while we were "in flight" - watching a graphic representation of our trip to the moon on a circular screen.

I have no clear recollection of what I am saying but the family story is that I am asking for cufflinks for my father (he's had a pair stolen from his desk at work) and that I am asking for a bottle of gin for my mother (she didn't drink gin - obviously) primed to do this by my Dad because it would embarass her.

And this year is the first year I have not had to engage in the compulsory perpetuation of the Santa myth while I've been a parent...oh the relief...the lack of sneaking about...it's like I've been one of the elders in the M. Night Shyalmalan movie 'The Village' these last few years.

From My Bookshelf: Gullivar Jones

I first encountered Lieutenant Gullivar Jones in Marvel's British weekly black and white reprints where he was updated to be a Vietnam veteran transported to Mars by dying Martian wizard Lu-Pov (an in-joke over the name of Richard Lupoff - I guess). He immediately became one of my fave characters and I really loved the art (although I wasn't big on reading credits boxes at age 8) by Gil Kane, Ross Andru and Gray Morrow.

Later I also obtained reprints of the original novel - by Edwin L Arnold (also author of Phra the Phoenician) - as a kid I didn't get too far into this before I realised that it was quite different to the comic book. To be honest, a little tamer... the comic strip had been really jazzed up to make it more like John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Re-reading the novel just recently I found it to be quite beautifully written and very humourous too. I wouldn't be the first person to see the influence of The Time Machine on the story - yes, the Hither and Thither (!) people are reminiscent of the Eloi and the Morlocks but the inclusion of the magic carpet as Gullivar's mode of transport to Mars seems to bring us into the Arabian Nights style of storytelling. Joe Petagno's cover has Gullivar (re-spelled as Gulliver in these editions) surfing to Mars on his carpet while the sublime Frazetta cover of the Ace edition has Gully Jones at the feet of two battling titanic Martian monsters like a character in a Harryhausen movie.

Oh yeah, I mentioned that Arnold's other book was Phra the Phoenician and of course Gullivar in the comic book encounters a huge humanoid amphibian called Phra.

Bonfire Night!

For those suffering the disappointment of a lack of live-blogging regarding trick or treaters on Monday; I was visited by inumerable skeletons, witches, ghosts, vampires and one very tiny Batman.

Tonight is Bonfire Night...which here at Gately Mansion we'll be celebrating with masses of fireworks (a curry!) and no bonfire. And if you're setting off fireworks follow the firework code - as advised by Guy Fawkes himself in this Standard Fireworks ad from 1974.

By the way, I am old enough to remember fireworks that you were allowed to hold - one was called the Olympic Torch - and also a rather terrifying hovering and spinning firework called The Flying Saucer (natch!).