Can we talk about Kooba Cola?

If you read Golden Age Blue Beetle or other Fox comics, you'll run into ads for Kooba cola!

Save bottlecaps - earn prizes!

When I first encountered it, I started to look up the Kooba Corporation, 125 E 46th St, New York, NY

Its a residence?!

Kooba Cola

This wasn't MAD magazine running a fake ad.

These are not *fake* ads. These are real ads, about real prizes, that cost real money or Kooba bottlecaps.

But, like that kid in the Matrix who says 'there is no spoon' - there was NO KOOBA Cola (let alone bottlecaps)

More of these classic comic book ads.
(my original thread got broken, so attempting a patch)

This is from 1967 by Lucky Products. Looks like no game here, just the soldiers.

Go, capture the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine! Some of these were 3D, but others were very flat (Shipped in a footlocker indeed).

I've played many an hour playing games using cardboard tokens, so flat plastic seems fine.

Who's Who in Atlas Seaboard Comics!
#WhosWhoAtlas

I saw a brief text document and thought it could use an 80s style enhancement.

Please enjoy a slowly growing sticky 🧵of long lost characters from Martin Goodman's mid 1970s Atlas Seaboard comics (to the extent I can) #WhosWhoAtlas The Cougar

Part DeadMan, part Kolchak The Night Stalker!

There were only 2 issues, and they had completely different creative teams (even different editors). Done in familiar 70s Bronze Age horror style. The 3rd issue 'a crippled cougar' possibly permanently???

Arthur Guy Empey wrote the bestselling WWI memoir, Over The Top. He was an American who volunteered and served with the British as a bomber and machine-gunner, wounded at the Somne. After the war, he wrote fiction, creating Terence O'Leary. The sinking of the Lusitania seemed to the cause Empey, an American sergeant, volunteered with the British, and was soon living in the squalor of the trenches in France - lice, rats, mud and Germans trying to kill you for the cherry on top.

Private Snafu

Once a military secret, Private Snafu (voiced by Mel Blanc) was part of a multi-talent effort to train the military in WWII. These were intended for adults, about serious topics, despite looking like Looney Tunes to modern audiences. There were different ideas about training films - are they like textbooks, serious and sober, or could serious and sober topics use humor, sex and other more or less juvenile aspects to open up heads. Frank Capra thought boring was bad.

Was Hijacker D.B. Cooper a Comic Book fan?

About 50 years ago, right before Thanksgiving, 1971, a man who gave his name as Dan Cooper successfully skyjacked a plane, bailing out with $200,000 - never to be seen again. If you are an American and have never heard of the comic Dan Cooper, that is to be expected. It is a Franco-Belgian comic book, begun in 1954,mabout a Canadian fighter jock. I think it was in French and German, but not English.

Yvonne Craig with short hair, which 'emphasizes her youthful perkiness' as well as ease of care. Yvonne Craig in publicity stills with an updo hair style and large earrings, and longer hair sand jewelry.

#ThePrisoner #LogansRun Nerd Talk

The Village is a bounded society in which Number 6 finds himself.

I am not a number. I am a free man.

Is the Village 'evil'?
Does the Village represent society?
Are many of the villagers happy? What does Number 6 fight for/against?

He want to escape? Does he only to escape?
Is Number 6 a threat to others' happiness?
Does Number 6 owe anything to other villagers?

#StarTrek Nerd Talk

Transporters:

1) kill you here, rebuild you there
2) kill you here, build a new you there
3) turn you into a newt (matter stream) but you get better?

In other words, is there continuity of personhood in transporters? #StarTrek is full of very smart people. Would they walk into a Kill You Now, Resurrect You Later machine?

Yet from very early on (episode 5), we see the transporter building a duplicate. That raises an issue that its a high tech Xerox (later two Rikers)

Earth Spider Picture Scroll from Tokyo National Museum

Tsuchigumo, a spider-like spirit, here in the guise of a lovely woman, encounters Minamoto no Yorimitsu. Sensing danger, he strikes at her with his sword, and she disappears. He pursues her into caves in a mountain. Inside the pursuers find, not a lovely lady, but an enormous spider. The tsuchigumo is slain, with lead to skulls and smaller spiders coming from the body.

*Source: Dailyartmagazine.com

Oh, life could be a dream
-sh-boom

If I could take you up in paradise up above
-sh-boom

If you would tell me
I'm the only one that you love
Live could be a dream, sweetheart

-Hello, hello, again
sh-boom and hopin' we'll meet again Oh, life could be a dream
-sh-boom

If only all my precious plans would come true

If you would let me spend my whole life lovin' you
Life could be a dream, sweetheart

1939 Centaur publications Amazing Mystery Funnies 11

A wonderfully dramatic cover by Paul Gustavson with "The Fantom of the Fair". This issue hit the stands about 8 weeks after Detective Comics 27.

If it was a contest of covers, I would have picked this one! A very early and emotionally intense Bill Everett cover in Centaur's Amazing Mystery Funnies 6, probably hitting the stands in Holiday 1938.

Umberto Eco: The Myth of Superman (1962)
Reprinted in Arguing Comics (2004)
#BooksAboutComics

Came across this article about Superman from Umberto Eco, and thought I would tweet out some excerpts and ideas. Eco first talks about heroes - equipped with superior powers, and those powers are often extremes of real abilities. That, in our modern world, man is sublimated to organizations and machines, thus our heroes embody powers to unthinkable degree we ourselves can not satisfy.

Gives ya chills, doesn't it?

From the 1928 film, The Man Who Laughs, an adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel.

So, if asked "Who created the Joker, Batman's arch foe?", perhaps Victor Hugo and the people behind this movie deserve a nod.

https://twitter.com/bufocalvin/status/1352599302384750595

Here is an article that says Finger, Kane and Robinson did credit the film, specifically a still of Veidt in makeup as Gwynplaine, for the inspiration.

Funny that Universal did not remake this film as a talkie (it did get a release with sync music)

northparktheatre.org/the-man-who-la…

My First Adventure with Mary Poppins

This is my first time going through P.L. Traver's book, Mary Poppins (The first in a series). I grew up with the Disney film, so it brings up the differences in adaptations, particularly in how Disney softened Mary Poppins. In this first book, Mary Poppins is not there to fix anything really. She just, well, "Pops in". She is stern, aloof, vain, curt and, quite honestly, a liar in that she fervently denies several of the adventures with Jane and Michael ever happening.

The Doctor : "Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear... in peace, and never even know the word "Dalek"."

#DoctorWho on ethics

https://twitter.com/ComicsintheGA/status/1351946195674030088

You might think "Of course I would wipe out the Daleks" but the Doctor steps it deeper. Are his orders to do so just? What about all the unions and bridges made between others in the struggle against the Daleks? Does he have the right? Is it right? What does it do to him?

How does Close Encounters of the Third Kind stand for you?

Meh? Good? Great? Spielberg's Greatest?

I can give you some of my feelings on it

https://twitter.com/bufocalvin/status/1306877669972365312

My threads of this type can get a dozen tweets or longer, and be built over several hours as I pop on and off Twitter.

Please interject anytime if it catches your interest, or check in again in a few hours to see a more complete post.

Let's cast off

How to Pick your Next Read
1: Walking the Aisle

You have a basic idea of what you want to read, now you walk the aisle and feel the Muse. Maybe its the spine, or the condition, or the cover or the color. Something inspires you to reach for ...that...book... How to Pick your Next Read
2: Browse the online market

Whether its an online bookseller or a library, you just browse it all from your comfy chair, and never worry about how many books you can actually carry (or read).

How about a little #ShakespeareSunday with #StarTrek

The Conscience of the King

Just the 13th episode, a fit number for this tragedy.

It originally aired December 8, 1966

A sad tale is best for Winter

(art by juan ortiz) The episode begins with a murder - the on stage murder by Macbeth, as played by actor Anton Karidian (a play on Carradine?).

Arnold Moss is the actor playing the actor. A veteran of Shakespeare and Broadway, his voice oozes gravitas.

Close-up of Action Comics 43 (cover date Dec, 1941)

While America isn't in the War yet, Superman is on this great cover by Fred Ray of Harrisburg, PA in his first year of doing Action covers.

This Superman - part flying, part leaping, still defines how I see Superman in flight. The Superfriends cartoon was inconsistent in how it showed Superman in flight, but I always liked the bent leg and one arm forward look.

That is how my Mego Superman always flew

Cowboy Western Tip of the Day

Today, the tale of Blackjack Ketchum

The story you are about to read may contain elements of questionable veracity, but open up a cool beverage and read the tale of a train robber at the end of the line. Tom Ketchum was born in 1863 in San Saba County, Texas. At the time, the 1860 Census only puts down 1000 folks, about 10% slaves. It was a rough place, with 25 people lynched from 1880-1896 by vigilantes. He had brothers Sam (10 years older) and Berry (the ranch heir)