Everything old is ... well, still old but cool

Well, I have thought a long time about what the topic of my 500th post should be. I would have liked to continue with the Yaya Han post but she still gets me too excited to keep it PG so I´m going to elaborate on a topic that I last mentioned on this blog´s eighth year anniversary.

With the way comics are right now I thought it appropriate to go into more detail about this 64 page spectacular which you could purchase back then for the price of only 1.75 US dollars and I bet you can still get it at some comic shops for that price - or at least much less than the 4 bucks you pay for the 22 pages of comic story entertainment from the big two.

Another reason why I wanted to do this post is that I went so far in my preparation for this post as to actually get the physical copy from the folder with my old AVENGERS comics. Which means I climbed on some unsafe contraption to get the folder from my book shelf and it has been lying on my chair for six months or so. And it´s really about time that I can put it back because I just unearthed more old comics last weekend.

Now when I say unearthed I don´t mean that I dug a hole - which would have been easier than what I ended up doing -  but I did what no sane man should do. I went ahead and moved my desk so I could get to all the old comics that were in the back and which I couldn´t reach otherwise.

Now you might ask why no sane man would do that since it sounds logical to move the desk if I can´t get to the comics otherwise. The thing is that the desk is one of those old desks that weighs a lot on its own as it is and since it´s filled with comics its probably weighs a ton. If a sane man - and I mean a man in the physical prime of his youth - tried to move this desk he would have trouble. If somebody like me who has an injured knee, a bad shoulder, tendonitis in both hands and not enough sleep tries to move it it becomes something akin to suicide or at least self inflicted trauma. And I should also mention that my desk has these huge piles of CD Roms with Doctor Who episodes, comics, hardcovers and all kind of stuff I got at Erlangen on top of it. So the actual weight is more around two tons.

Under normal circumstances this is something I would never attempt but since I already had to scrap my plans for the day ( my mother tricked me into leaving the house ) I tried tried it and the damn thing really moved.

Okay, maybe I have to explain this. I was just lying in bed, happy as a clam trying to catch up on episodes of ARROW. When the series first aired - which was before it aired on german tv - I got all the episodes of the first season from the internet so that I could enjoy it together with my family. But the others weren´t so enthusiastic about it and I only got them to watch the first episode. Later I watched episodes two and three but I waited with the rest still hoping my family would show an interest since the series is good. As things progressed the show was broadcast on german tv but I missed the first episodes and since I never got around to continue watching ARROW I ended up being the one who got left behind.

Well, the thing is that they just started again showing new episodes of ARROW on german tv but like always it´s on at the same time as other channels are showing new episodes of SUPERNATURAL and HAWAII FIVE - O. With SUPERNATURAL me and my brother are still at least half a season behind ( we are the only two watching this and I think we still have half a dozen episodes from last season on the tv tape thing ) but we are current with GRIMM which airs after ARROW. So I got the 4th season of HAWAII FIVE - O from the internet ( I found some episodes in the spanish dubbing which I´m watching with my mother ) but I wanted to catch up on ARROW so I can finally watch the new episodes of it together with the rest of my family instead of having to do something else before GRIMM is on tv.

And they are showing the big finale of HAWAII FIVE  - O season 4 Today.

Oy, there is either nothing on tv or all the good shows air at the same time which I think is one of the reasons why people buy the DVD sets.

That and the constant commercials they slap on tv while you are watching anything. But I don´t want to go into all the DVD sets I still have to watch. So I was catching up on ARROW and was making a food break but there was no bread - which is typical since there is always something missing whenever I try to prepare a meal - and my mother told me I had to leave the house and buy bread if I wanted to have breakfast. What she didn´t tell me was that one of my brothers was already gone to the shop across the street to do the shopping. So I had to interrupt watching ARROW and after I had gotten something for my breakfast ( which naturally failed to get approval from my Mom although she tricked me into buying it in the first place ) I thought it would be a good idea to see if I can move the desk to find out where my old issues of MASTERS OF KUNG FU were.

I never expected to be able to move it but call it luck or the few pounds I gained since becoming unemployed it did move and instead of watching all the episodes of ARROW I spent Saturday pulling all my old issues of ROM, GHOST RIDER or MOON KNIGHT out of the desk, then cleaning up all the dust that had gathered behind my desk ( something my Mom always tells me to do but without the part of reading the old comics for hours ) and then bagging the comics and putting them back again. I do not know how other people arrange their comics but in my case I always put them somewhere where I can easily reach them - until I have to rearrange my furniture or move into another room. The thing is my desk used to be sideways in my room so I could still reach all the comics in the back. But then I had to move it so the back was against the wall and I´m cut off from the good stuff. Which is why I didn´t put them all back.

Okay, I had to put the desk against the wall if I wanted to sleep in my bed on Saturday but moving it was no easy task and while it was nice to put most of the comics in bags so they are protected ( I ran out of bags on the last four comic piles ) who knows when I will be able to do it again ?

So the first thing I checked were the old issues of MASTERS OF KUNG FU and like I expected there was issue 100 although my copy was in much worse shape than the one I bought at the comics shop so it wasn´t a total loss. The other issues I found were number 116, the first one I ever got and where I colored the Spidey face in the corner with markers, issue 102, the first one with Gene Day penciling, issue 81 by Mike Zeck and THE RETURN OF SHANG - CHI from 1990 with art by David and Dan Day.

Then I put those aside that I want to read again like the issues of DC´s VIGILANTE that I bought the last time at the Comic Action. I know that my brother has some spanish collections ( and when I say collections I mean just four or five issues that are glued together ) and I might also have one or two spanish issues but I think the series is better than it gets credit. There is also the DEADMAN - DEAD AGAIN mini series which I will mention in my DEATH IN COMIC posts although I have written about it before on the blog and the same goes for the WARLOCK reprints and the INFINITY books with the SILVER SURFER tie in issues I still have. I had at least 22 to 80 but I got rid of most that didn´t tie in with INFINITY stuff.

And the word infinity is really a mission statement because with INFINITY GAUNTLET, INFINITY WAR, INFINITY CRUSADE, INFINITY WATCH, INFINITY ABYSS and what not there really is no end in sight. I mean Disney just released the original graphic novel THE INFINITY REVELATION which I haven´t read yet but at least it´s written and drawn by Jim Starlin.

And if you are writing about death in comics there´s no way to do that without mentioning Jim Starlin or Thanos. No matter if you put the INFINITY GAUNTLET in there or not, those two are just obligatory.

Speaking about the INFINITY GAUNTLET, I was thinking about getting the omnibus but I think I will re - read the whole series first before making that decision. I guess if George Perez had finished the series I wouldn´t give it so much thought but that would have been a big incentive. On one side it is a bummer that George didn´t finish the book although I can understand that it might not be very motivating if most of the issues are just the heroes ganging up on Thanos, then they get beat by him, then they attack him again, he defeats them again, rinse, repeat so to say.

On the other side it was a big chance for Ron Lim ( one of my favorite artists ) who gave all the following series a cohesive look by staying so long. Okay, by this time you have probably realized that we are not going to talk about AVENGERS 300 so I might as well change the title and wrap things up. I already mentioned George Perez and another series by him I didn´t put back into the desk is SACHS & VIOLENS. Maybe not to read it again but to put them into better comic bags - as soon as I have some new ones. I also set aside the issues of JACK KIRBY´S FOURTH WORLD by John Byrne I got so far ( one of them I just got at Erlangen this year ). Again, a book that has flown under most people´s radar and probably undeservingly so. This is definitely a book I will keep an eye out for.

What else ? Oh yeah, Bob Layton´s IRON MAN run. After doing three posts on the topic I couldn´t resist putting them aside for another read. Some of the issues are not in the good shape I hoped they would be but others - like John Romita Jr´s ARMOR WARS II issues and the following issues by Paul Ryan - look like they just came out from the comic shop Yesterday.

And since I mentioned Paul Ryan the biggest chunk of reading material I set aside is his run on FF which began with issue 356 and lasted until issue 414. There is definitely a post about the death of Reed Richards that took place during that time coming but also about all the rest of the crazy stuff like Lyja laying Johnny´s egg, time travel and the Watcher.

So after putting all the other books back into the desk or into the comic boxes I didn´t get as much sleep as I hoped this weekend and I´m still aching all over - especially my back - from moving the desk which is the reason why I didn´t write another post this weekend. And this post didn´t exactly go as planned either. I was hoping since I got most of the material prepared ahead of time I could stay on topic but why should this post be the exception to how things go down on TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN ?

In any case, this was post 500 and who knows what the next one will be about : Yaya Han Top Ten costumes ( finally ), more death in comics, crazy Fantastic Four stories, maybe both and maybe even Avengers 300.

Since this is not a normal post I can´t put any links here like usual since most of the stuff I researched were pictures of Grace Park from Hawaii Five O or previews and reviews of Jim Starlin´s Infinity Relevation which I will post when I have talked about that subject. But I just have to post the original cover that inspired the homage cover above by Paul Ryan.

Since the post was so all over the place I want to add a few videos that I couldn´t post so far because they didn´t fit the topic. The first one is from Britain Got Talent so my readers in the UK may have seen this but for all others here´s one that I think deserves to be seen : Attraction, the hungarian shadow theatre group with their first audition on the show.



Continuing the theme of animated cartoons with latino dubbing here´s BRAVESTAR. LA LEYENDA, one hour and twenty minutes of fun. I hope.



I also want to continue the theme of german kabarett from last post ( there is a difference between cabaret and kabarett which is kind of a political stand up that has a long tradition in Germany ) with one of the best know : Hans Dieter Hüsch who sadly has already passed away.



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