One last sip of The Incredible Hulk

OK, Kids, here you all go with the final 7-eleven Hulk straw. It was acquired for me by my good friend, and fellow CAGer Liz. Thanks Liz. She has been both a good sport and a good Pal since we met a year or so back. This past year she had entered her work into DimeStore Production’s annual Comicbook Idol. I know that she got through the first couple of rounds of voting but I don’t know what has happened (I think she missed the last cut).

Anyways, this is the last of the fast food toy images for a while. There doesn’t seem to be any Dark Knight fast food toys, and I don’t think that there are any other superhero movies ‘til the end of the year.

Tie one on for Spidey

OK kids, this is probably going to be my final “wearable heroes” postings as I’m all out of superhero clothing for the time being. As you can see from the image on the left Sometimes I even wear Spidey on my head (not sure what happened to this image, the hat is yellow, and the pic looked good when I took it, but this is what I got when I posted; I’m blaming Skrulls). Still, no hero wardrobe is complete without a tie. That’s right, a tie — and well — I have two:



The white tie is from the ‘70s and (while you can’t see it here) it actually has a very nasty rust-colored water stain on it, which I Photoshopped it out for this posting). The other tie is from the ‘80s or ‘90s. that was a gift from one of my kids as I recall, probably given to me on Father’s Day I would imagine.

This next item is a baseball glove that my brother purchased for my son when my son was very young. I don’t know that Dylan ever actually used the glove, as he was never really into sports and played T-Ball only for one year before moving on to soccer. (I think that my daughter, Kayla might have, years later gotten more use out of the glove, but she too was more into soccer, and then basketball.)

Anyways, it has passed from them to me. (To be sure, I’m thinking that the gift was always more for me than either one of them in the first place.)



Needless to say, you are going to want to be able to tell time, so this Spidey watch (from the House of Kraft) could be very well just the thing.



Then, finally, because you are going to want to hide who you are wearing all of this crap way-cool Spidey stuff, a Spidey mask.



Welp, I’m done with this thread for now. Next up will be my observations of the new Batman flick

More heroes from my closet

Over the past couple of days I’ve been posting images of some of my wearable heroes. Well, here’s something interesting, Most of you folks think that — as a certified Marvel Zombie — I’m all about Marvel wear, well, what that is essentially is true, it is not entirely so (as the Superman hat to the left can attest). hence, I will now present some of my non-Marvel wear:

First up is my Calvin & Hobbes shirt. Now I know what you are thinking, Bill Watterson never authorized any Calvin & Hobbes merchandising. For him, it was all about the comic itself. Well, when I purchased the shirt, I didn’t realize that, so I bought the shirt. It was only later that I realized that it was a bootleg. Needless to say, as I love the characters so much, I can’t get rid of the shirt, only as you can imagine, I no longer wear it out of the house. All-in-all a fair compromise (And Bill, if you are reading this, I’m sorry, but if it helps, I’ve purchased all of your books about Calvin & Hobbes).



Next up are a pair of Image shirts that I scored back in ‘95 at the San Diego Comic Con. That was perhaps the most fun I ever had at a convention. I was at the height of my professional career and knew or was known by most of the Pros at the event. (Oh yeah, the image off to the left is the back of the Wetworks T.)






While I was at this convention, I also donated blood at the Robert A. Heinlein blood bank, and received this free T-Shirt: I’m also including the small logo on the front as well as the back image. Technically not a comic-T but as I got it in San Diego, at a Con, I think it should count.



Next up are a couple more shirts that I scored at that ‘95 San Diego Con. One from Tekno Comics (a company that no longer Publishes) and a Dark Horse Star Wars shirt:





Hey, remember the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie? Don’t worry, I do, and this was the T-Shirt that people who saw it on opening night got. In fact, it was “technically” our entrance. Everyone was supposed to wear the shirt into the film. Several did, but many did not.



This next shirt I got at last year’s MoCCA convention. I have no idea what the comic it is promoting is about, but it was free, and it is kinda cool. Still, it is mostly a shirt I wear around the house, rather than out and about.



These last two shirts I got several years ago from not a comic book company but some Tech company (OKI Semiconductor) that had commissioned the creation of these two characters to promote their product lines and/or services. I tried at the time to convince them that I could create actual comics with these characters, but I never really got anywhere with them.





OK, that’s it for now. See you again tomorrow.

The more you wear...

OK kids, if you didn’t get enough of superheroes you can wear yesterday, here comes part the duce. This first shirt was acquired for me by my lovely daughter at some event where there was a guy airbrushing T-shirts:



Cool, eh? Still, while I know that many of you think I’m all about Spidey-Man, but that isn’t entirely true. Nope. Sometimes I wear the FF on my chest.



Sometimes I wear the Silver Surfer.



Sometimes I even wear Stan.



Then, of course, there ar the two T-Shirts I received back in the late
’80s/early ’90s when I freelanced for Marvel and was invited to their summer, company picnic. The image to the left is a close-up shot of the logo on the right breast of th front of this T. while the Wolverine is what appeared on the back.



Originally, Wolverine was in B&W, and I had my Brother-in-Law air brush the art, as he was looking to practice,and I though that it would be really cool to have Wolvie in color. As I recall, this was the second year I was invited to the picnic. The first year we received the shirt that appears below. I mean, what is a picnic with out an ant or two, eh? The Picnic(s) were at some place in Jersey. I took a train into the city, the subway to Marvel’s office, and then was bused to Jersey. All-in-all a good day.



Oh yeah, On one of those trips, they also gave us this hat to wear, and while I really haven’t worn it since (I do wear the shirts), I can’t bear to part with it.



Additionally not only had I been invited to Marvel’s Summer event a couple of years in a row, but I had also been invited to their year-end Holiday party (always held in January, for some reason), which was a great big bash that took up the entire top floor of some big hotel in NYC. Unfortunately there were no giveaway Ts with those events, but they were way cool anyway.

I’m going to leave off here for now, and pick this up again tomorrow with a batch of non-Marvel items that I have in my superhero wardrobe (and again, remember, these aren’t all of my wearible art, just the ones that I could find).

Funnybook wearables

OK Kids, this post is precisely what it sounds like. Sure, sure we all have comicbook wearables, and lately, as you have all have oohed and ahhed over some of the stuff I’ve already posted. So I figured that I’d post for you as much of what I could find this time out.

You ready? I hope so, buecause this is going to be a fun ride for some of you folks. Well, the first thing you can see is a Spidey pin I acquired back in the mid-‘90s (San Diego I believe).

What you see here is a Batmnan pin that I picked up when Batman Begins hit the theaters. Both of these pins adorn a black leather vest of mine that I often wear at conventions

OK, here we go, I’m going to start off simple with a fes Spidey T-SHirts:





OK, so I’m an aging hippy, get over it:



This next T-shirt was a giveaway that I received by mailing in prof-of-purchase seals from some Brach’s food product. I think that I got it around Spider-Man 3. You can see the Brach’s logo that appeared on the left sleeve.



This T-shirt also came by trading food proof-of-purchase seals for it, only I don’t remember what product. This shirt was also from Spidey 3 as I recall.



This next shirt is from my Mom, who purchased it In Italy a couple of years ago when she went there.



These next two shirts are not T-shirts, but something more. The first is a silk Spidey Club shirt and the second is a Spidey jersey. I got them both at an extreme markdown at a local store (they were originally $50.00 each, but I got them both for $30.00 for the two of them — cool, eh?).





OK, I’m going to cut this off her for now. This isn’t all of my funnybook wearables (not by far), but I didn’t want to overload you all. Come back over the next couple of days, and you’ll see what I have for you.

Second time not so much the charmer

Let’s file this one under, “Even when you win, you lose!” Seems that while everyone agrees that this year’s The Incredible Hulk is way better a film than 2003’s The Hulk the payoff at the end of the tunnel isn’t quite what the filmmakers were hoping to see:

After four weekends, the Louis Leterrier-directed "The Incredible Hulk" has earned $125 million, the same as what "Hulk" had pulled in at the same time in its run. "Hulk" finished with $132 million, and its successor is unlikely to do much better.

You can read the whole story on Yahoo Movie News.

Oh yeah, just to put the proper spin on this it turns out that the production costs and marketing expenses on the second film were much steeper then on the first; totaling more than $200 million for the second while they were only about $150 on the first.

Bummer, eh?

Spidey is my Banker

Well, to be sure, he really isn’t my banker, but I do think of him that way whenever I write checks. You see, I have (through Checks in the Mail) Spider-Man checks, as well as a check cover. Since my bank allows customers to purchase checks from third-party manufacturers (and since those third-party checks are cheaper than the ones the Bank can sell), I’ve long opted to go that route. Given that my wife and I share our checking account, obviously only one of us can control the checkbook. As it turns out, since she writes most of the checks, she carries the checkbook on her, and thus always got to choose what the checks looked like.

Well, several years ago, we discovered that we actually used ATMs and electronic checking more than paper checks, so as a gift, my lovely wife purchased for me a pack or 200 checks with Spider-Man embossed on them (there are 4 different scenes, I’ve posted one — sans all personal info — here). Since we hardly ever used paper checks, and she was constantly checking the balance online it really wasn't a really a problem that I had a patch of non-sequential checks.



The interesting part of the story occurred when the checks never arrived, Shelly notified Checks In the Mail and they sent a new batch of checks. Several months later, a neighbor or ours brought over a package of checks that was accidentally delivered to her. Turns out it was the missing 200 checks. Unwilling to simply toss the checks, I squirreled them away in the back of my sock drawer. As stated, I don’t writ checks very often (perhaps a dozen a year from me) so those checks have lasted quite a while.

When I ran through the initial batch, I simply pulled out the misdirected set and have been using them, since the checks are already out of sequence, and the similarly-numbered check is from years, and years ago, there is no chance of any conflict. Needless to say, I now have 400 checks for the price of 200, and probably a decade’s worth of Spidey checks, which is great, as Checks in the Mail no longer offers strictly Spidey checks, but a full run of Marvel heroes (which isn’t actually bad, either).