A Timeless Journey in Stamford, CT celebrates Free Comic Book Day

Check out this very cool video clip of Paul Salerno from A Timeless Journey celebrates Free Comic Book Day on Saturday May 5th:

 

The clip is from It's Relevant (Stamford).

Free Comic Book Day: Debreifing #1

Yeah, this is going to take a couple of posts, I would have posted about this on Sunday (or even yesterday, but, well, I had “Intertube issues”. Now, I’m about to run out (to pick up DC Comic stuff @ Taco Bell), and then go to lunch, so I’ve got to make this quick.

As you know, Saturday I went to the Bronx Heroes Con where I got to interview Dondie co-creator Irwin Hasen with my pal Mark Mazz, which was (needless to say) wicked cool.

While at the con I hooked up with a buncha friends and creators, scoring some very nice Indie books (which I’ll talk about later), and then came home to find a stack of some 30 FCBD comics t (and a War Machine Clix) hat my pal Paul Salerno from A Timeless Journey in Stamford, CT put aside for me, and I thanked him for his indulgence by spending a copious amount of funnybooks from him.

Then I scooted over to my (regular) comics guy and picked up my books from last week. Now — as stated — I’m about to jet to Taco Bell for their funnybooks (Thanks, Marc).

Then it’s lunch with my good friend Neil. The rest of this to follow in a new post...

Mary Jane, meet Thomas Jane (sort of)

OK, so this is the coolest thing (Hey, I’m a Spider-Geek, so yeah, it is the coolest thing). Last week when I stopped in to Magnum Comics in The Bronx to meet Chris Torres, one of the guys at the shop pointed out to me that The Punisher (released April 16, 2004) showed up In Spider Man 2 (June 30, 2004).

Don’t believe me? Then check out this clip.



Now do you think its cool? I thought so. If you want to patch into some other Spider-Man movie trivia, you can go here. Still, I’m quite entertained by the Punisher showing up in Spidey, especially when you consider that the character was originally introduced in the pages of Spider-Man (ASM #129, to be precise).

Yeah, loads of cool stuff going on in the background, if you just know where to look.

With a little help from my Friends

I hadn’t been to A Timeless Journey in Stamford for a couple of weeks (been busy, ya’ kno’?), so I stopped in this Saturday and well, in addition to scoring a couple of new comics that I hadn’t yet acquired, my good buddy (and owner) Paul Salerno, handed me a bag of to-be-assembled Spidey toys from his gum machine.

Turns out these were the three missing toys that I’ve been missing from his Marvel character Gum Machine.

First up, is the ever-mysterious “Backwards bending Spidey”



Not quite sure what that pose signifies, or what he could possibly doing (voguing, perhaps?) Then we have the very cool and always-menacing Doc Ock.



and, now, for the long-awaited, never-before-seen, eight figure:



Yep, the third character in the series, was yet another Spidey.

All together now...



Thanks Paul, you’re the bestest!

Building my Spidey Library

So, my local comicbook shop (A Timeless Journey) shot me an email the other day about a big one-day-only sale. So — given that I’ve been working on the Official Index to the Marvel Universe Spider-Man entries, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in my Spider-Titles. So I scored a fist full of comics at a sweet discount.

While I’ve been doing this type of back-fill over the recent years whenever I go to a Comic Con, I finally realized that I sort of owe my local shops some of my back-issue business, and want to purchase as much of my back issue needs from their stock.

I figure over the next couple of weeks I want to seriously take stock of the Spidey comics that I’m missing, and make up a serious list that I’ll start carrying around with me. I really would like to see how close I can come to completing all my runs by the end of the year (I’m not that far off).

I’ll keep you posted.

Another Spidey toy

I was at my local comic shop yesterday, and dropped three bucks worth of quarters into his “gumball” machine, only to come up with one of the remaining five figures (A Spidey who appears to be ledge-surfing). I also acquired duplicates on Sandman and the Spidey figure I already had (still don’t know what the eighth figure is (perhaps Tobor?)

This set of figures is way cooler than the first set, as that initial set had the figures separated into two or three pieces, while this one has them in three or more pieces.

(Daughter has the camera, I’ll get a better pic when she gets back from the Maccabi Games.)

A weekly Spidey Fix!

No, I’m not talking about the three-times-a-month Amazing Spider-Man comic that has been coming out for the past year or so, I’m talking about the fact that Spidey now appears weekly in Comic Shop News.

That’s right, beginning (I think) with issue #1150, CSN is starting to reprint the syndicated Spidey strip by Stan Lee and (his brother) Larry Leiber. My local paper doesn’t carry the series, and, well, as much of a Spidey fan that I am I‘m simply not going to pick up another newspaper that I’m not going to read, simply to read these stories.

I believe that many of them were reprinted somewhere, and either I purchased this reprint volume, or will purchase it when (if) it becomes available.

In the meantime, I’ll settle for picking up CSN each week at my local comicbook shop. At least these strips are all in color, and you know, free.

Today Is Free Comic Book Day

Go out and support your neighborhood comicbook shop.

I’m going to be at A Timeless Journey (Stamford CT) in the morning, then I’m heading over to Sarge’s in New London CT. I’ll be traveling with my good friends John A. Wilcox and Rusty Haller, as well as my nephew Tony-o.

See you in the funnypapers!

Free Comic Book Day is Coming!

I just wanted to remind everyone that Free Comic Book Day is coming (Saturday May 2nd). I was able to score a couple of early copies of free comics from my comics guy who surprised me yesterday with copies of Avengers (Marvel) and Bongo Comics (which contained a fun interior reference to Spider-Man).

The Avengers features a throw-down between two of the teems currently claiming to be Avengers (New and Dark) going up against Yimir the Frost Giant, and includes a special appearance by Thor. This story is written by Brian Michael Bendis, who turns in a very fine job, and is illustrated by Jim Chung and Mark Morales. I believe that it is a stand-alone, original story (that is to say not one that will show up in the regular continuity of whether New or Dark Avengers), but it is a part of the current continuity. In addition to being very well done, it has the added benefit of being a great peak into what kind of a match-up we can expect to see in the regular comics.

The Bongo comic is from their usual group of creators and is an equally well-done bit of Simpson and Futureama bit of absurdism. Personally it makes it makes me look forward to the the first Saturday in May every year.

As for me, I'll be at A Timeless Journey in Stamford in the morning, and then at Sarge’s in New London later in the day (both stores are in CT). Hope you all have fun.

Yes, it is still Free Comic Book Day in my House

As we all know, the annual Free Comic Book Day occurs (generally) the first Saturday in May, well, even though I missed out on the actual festivities this year (a first for me), because of a family event (out of which I could not get) I managed to score a full load of comics from my preferred funnybook store (A Timeless Journey in Stamford). Well, between the 30+ books I scored from Paul Salerno (Owner of the shop), and the dozen or so books I picked up at the NY Comic Con the week or so before, I’ve been literally swimming — Scrooge McDuck-style in funnybooks for the past month (and loving it!)

Most of the FCBD books I acquired were reprints and/or samplers some of it was targeted for kiddies, and thus not as interesting to me, while some were just art samples and background info. One was a “How To Draw” book, and only marginally interesting to me. Still a few were quite interesting. Of course there was a Marvel comic (staring Spidey) That I’m, going to review shortly for SpiderFan. Some of the others included Love and Capes #7 (A book I waxed enthusiastic about a week or so back). Well this version continues the love story between Abby and Mark (he is trying to propose to her, and not quite coming up with the “perfect” way to do so), while adding a new superhero (Steel Worker) to the mix. To be sure, Steel Worker (who looks suspiciously like a certain Iron Avenger who just had his own movie) plays only a minor roll, but does show up predominately on the cover of the comic.

Another fun read was Steve Rude’s The Moth. This comic has a real Jack Kirby feel to it, as well as being just a load of fun to read. Steve recently began his own publishing company which is handling both this and Nexus. I really enjoyed this comic due to its very retro feel, marking it as something of a rarity in today’s marketplace.

D. J. Coffman’s Hero by Night, (published by Platinum Studios) was also very interesting. If I’m understanding this correctly, Platinum has a Comic Book Challenge, the winner of which gets their concept into a print comic. The story is about a present-day individual who found the power ring of a 1950’s hero, and uses it to become a hero himself. Needless to say, it spins out into some results he had not quite anticipated. The book is a flip book and is backed up by Jorge Vega’s Gunplay. This one is a western that seems to be written with a Clint Eastwood “The Man with No Name” feel to it. Very well done. You can see why both of these concepts won this honor.

Another fun comic to read was an EC Sampler, that reprinted some classic horror stories from that legendary line of comics. As stated, there were some 30 FCBD comics that were issued (as well as a couple of Clix figures — which I also managed to score) all of which have given me several hours of enjoyment. I’ll probably talk some more about these comics over the next couple of days, but I felt that I should start with these.

It’s Sunday again (Naturally)

Yeah, here it is Sunday again, and I get to read the latest installment of The Amazing Spider-Man via the most generous contributions of The New York Post . Yeah, yeah, I actually have to purchase the paper (for a whopping .75¢ each, no less!) but yeah, I get to read the latest Spidey-Installment in their collectible reprint.

Interestingly enough, while this issue is continued from last week, it is also continued into next week, making it the very first three-parter. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, as the original comic is the same length as the other comics in the series. Near as I can figure, it is because there is a back-up tale with Spidey, and the Human Torch (as rendered by Stan, Jack, and Steve), so I’m figuring that The Post simply chose to split the story up in such a way as to spotlight the back-up story all on its own.

In other news, I was appearing yesterday at A Timeless Journey , in downtown Stamford, CT to sign copies of Psychosis! #1 I think that I did OK, I sold all four copies of the mag that the store had stocked (and added one more for Paul’s rack so he could still have a copy), and a set of three of Agent Unknown, the Renegade Press comic I created and wrote back in the late ’80s. Not a bad day, eh?