Thursday, May 30, 2019

Basil Wolverton's Lost Plop! Cover


 
I can't say for certain who lost it but I'm definitely glad I stumbled across it as I was wandering around the internet one day!

By the way, you can sometimes learn interesting tidbits on that thar internet that you never knew before! I found out on Wikipedia that DC Comics did not at first hire Basil Wolverton to draw Plop! covers at first. No! It turns out that the gentleman had drawn a group of those drawings years earlier and had never gotten them published anywhere so he showed them to somebody at DC who said yes, we can use those. (After that founding crop of drawings was exhausted then DC did go ahead and hire the gentleman to continue the series with some new ones, luring Mr. Wolverton out of retirement to do so; however the above drawing was never printed as any Plop cover.) 

And here's your hayfamzone Bonus for the day: if you hurry right over to your Local Comic Book Store and purchase the latest issue of Mad Magazine, you'll open it up to find bound on the inside a facsimile copy of  Plop! #1 on much better paper than the original 1973 version of that comic was printed on! (But the Plop! facsimile is NOT included in newsstand copies of Mad #7.)



Thursday, May 23, 2019

Jim Engel's Art Collection on TV!


Jim Engel is a fabulous cartoonist whose work I have enjoyed since the 1970s, and I had the opportunity to meet the gentleman in person at The 1983 Artists Party that I have written about before. Well, last Sunday night Mr. Engel was the focus of a 30-minute television show!

The show is titled Collector's Call and it has a web presence over here. Each episode of that series focuses on a different type of collection and Jim's episode was all about his original comic book artwork collection. For just a few more days you can watch that full episode on the Collector's Call website but after that you'll have to do a bit of investigating to find it.




Friday, May 17, 2019

The Largest Comic Book Ever!


I have always enjoyed the massiveness of oversized comic books. Do you remember all the Limited Collector's Editions from DC and all the Treasury Editions from Marvel back in the 1970s? The above Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer edition that was released in October of 1972 was the first of all those tabloid comics (and served as my introduction to the wonderful world of Rube Grossman artwork), and then many dozens of other Limited Collector's Editions and Treasury Editions followed.

Although tabloid-sized comics are magnificently oversized, there was an even larger comic book than them! Pre-dating the above Rudolph by five years was 1967's Wham-O Giant Comics #1.


Each page of Wham-O Giant Comics is the size of the TWO facing pages of a tabloid size comic so I'm ready to go out on a mathematical limb and say that Wham-O Giant Comics is TWICE the size  of a tabloid comic; each page of the Wham-O is the size of FOUR regular comic pages put together. The Grand Comics Database proclaims it to be "The biggest-sized comic ever published in terms of surface area." These 52 monstrous pages are area-equivalent to 208 regular-sized comic book pages. Huge! Have I convinced you yet?


This is the same Wham-O company that originated and still makes frisbees and hula hoops by the way. The company still exists but no longer publishes comics. The Batman TV show boom of the 1960s made producing comics attractive to many new publishers, including Wham-O. Giant Comics was intended to be an ongoing series but only this one issue made it into print.

But what an issue of great artwork it is! Wally Wood is one of the best comics artists ever of course, plus there is work by Ernie Colon and Marvin Stein and Henry Boltinoff, as well as the last-published work of the Golden Age master Lou Fine. This comic is a very impressive package.

And now here are two hayfamzone bonuses for you:

Look over here to watch a one-minute commercial for Wham-O Giant Comics #1 that aired on televisions across the nation back in 1967

and

over at this website you can view a full-screen image of each page of the huge comic!

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Harley Quinn! Rocketeer! Mondo Statues!


I had not heard of the company named Mondo before last week, and I thank hayfamzonder Dave Bowen for bringing it to my attention!

Mondo produces a wide variety of collectibles and comics fans might be most interested in Mondo-produced statues like the ones shown here featuring Harley Quinn and The Rocketeer.

You can investigate the world of Mondo for yourself here over at their website.

Friday, May 03, 2019

John Byrne has Signing Guidelines

I like that there is no charge for the signing.