Superman The Movie trading cards

Just listed in our Etsy shop:

Superman The Movie Trading Cards

Great vintage cards circa 1978 featuring a card showing Superman flying past the World Trade Center buildings in NYC.

      I remember asking my Father to take me to see the Superman movie over and over when I was about 8 years old on our Father/Daughter weekends together and as corny as the movie actually is, it holds a special spot in my heart for those fun weekends.

   I also remember my Mother taking me on a weekend trip to NYC when I was about 12 years old. We went to see the Rockettes, climbed up the Statue of Liberty, saw 4th of July fireworks from high up in the Empire State building and visited the World Trade Center. With everything else we saw that weekend, visiting the World Trade Center didn't really excite me all that much, all I really remember about it was a lot of flags and being a bit curious about why someone would build 2 identical buildings right next to each other (and that we went in to use the bathroom in one of the buildings) not really memories worth sharing but they are all I have of that particular place.

   I wish I could remember more but at the time, to a 12 year old girl those buildings were just boring buildings and far less captivating than anything I could go see at the movies.

   Kind of goes to show that ephemera like movie trading cards, can seem rather innocuous at the time of their printing/creation but come to have such more meaning when viewed through the hindsight that is time and age.

   I think sometimes both children and adults use movies, TV and comic books, especially one's that contain super heroes, to feel some sense of surety and righteousness in a frequently chaotic world.

The feeling when I look at that card is one of a bit of a bittersweet kick to the gut, a flashback to a simpler time and a reminder that no matter how boring our surroundings might seem, we should still stop to appreciate every step we take as we never know if we will ever walk that way again.

   

           

   

   

Nick Fury Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Kree-Skrull War trading card

I've kept this card on my wall above my computer for a couple of years now because it always give me a chuckle.

 

Ad for 2nd annual Marvel Con 1976

Found this ad in Iron Fist No.5 (1976)

Stan Lee made his last east coast appearance at Boston Comic Con this past weekend and I forget how much the tickets were to meet and greet him but I am quite sure it was more than 10 dollars for all 3 days with a meet and greet of Mr. Lee included in the admission cost.

   I wonder how many years the Marvel Con operated and what folks might remember from it. I wonder even more what Mr. Lee thinks of how comics in general and the con environment has changed.

    We could not afford to spring for Stan Lee tix this past weekend (or Tim Curry tix which really would have rocked our world) but some friends got fast shots of John Barrowman and Jay (of Silent Bob and Jay fame) so we feel we got our fandom on none the less. We also heard some pretty crazy loud hooting and hollering on Sunday when we attended and are hoping at least some of that was for Stan the Man.

   Best wishes to Mr. Lee where the road takes you from here, we sincerely hope from your first comic to Marvel Con to Boston this past weekend that you thoroughly enjoyed the ride!

   

Boston Comic Con 2017

 Just a handful of some of the awesome comic books we came home with from today's last day of Boston Comic Con:

   The variety this year of comics and prices was wonderful, we met some great vendors and it was a really fun event. We can't wait for the next one!

Boston Comic Con 2017

Judging Horror Comics by the Cover

When I was a kid we didn't have a lot of money to buy comic books and every penny I made babysitting I always spent on records, concert tickets or band t shirts ( I had my priorities). I made a deal with my mother that I could earn Archie or X-men comic books from our local variety store with good grades but that plan was kind of flawed from the start as a "C" was considered pretty good in my world so my youthful comic collection was quite a minimal one.

   Except for the horror comics.

 Horror comic digests always seemed to be plentiful at Goodwill and other local thrift shops. I actually had quite a collection of comic digests from those book shelves where I learned about all sorts of things both amazing (Thanks Dennis the Menace for your trip to The Smithsonian) and seriously creepy. I learned quite a bit about vampire lore and more specifically, what a banshee is from reading those old used horror comic digests.

  Last summer was a fun summer of trying to make a go of what (even tho it eventually closed) "the little comic shop that could". I learned a lot about comic books and the comic business but i also revisited my old friends, horror comics.

   It was fun finding old titles in the many long boxes owned by Dan Vince of The Comic Shop (Randolph, MA) and a bit of a rude awakening to find what the genre has become.

   I have not yet found any of the same titles that I read in those digests as a kid but I did see many of that variety:

   The art and vintage clothing are very familiar:

 Note the magazine title sitting in the rack in the below page scan, I wonder how many people were involved in the meeting where "Look" was changed to "Saw" and how many of those people could have known that small word "Saw" would live on as a horror series of movies 40+ years later?

So time marches on and horror "lite" enters the mainstream and thus, comic tie in's soon follow. Not quite as creepy as the circa 1960's reprints that I read as a kid but probably still too creepy for the 1950's comics code:

  However as the sci-fi universe taught us and comics have produced in a frame by frame format, time sometimes moves sideways. Many of those sideways factions of our time space continuum are not places we would like to visit but none the less, (much like the god awful gory Saw movies) we would be lacking in our education if we did not own up to the fact that they exist.
 
Modern horror comics seem to have split into factions of the kind of creepy and the truly gross:

The only way I can stomach selling Tim Vigil comic books is by digesting the art with a critical mind. Look at that woman's right arm, not her left which seems alright but her right arm? The perspective is all off, where is her elbow?
  I will not include the gross inside pages to this title or other Tim Vigil drawn titles but I think one can get the idea of what this type of book contains by the cover. Dan Vince and I had a few conversations about these titles when I worked for him at The Comic Shop and our joint decision was that we wanted to do business and make a profit but the type of customer that gets excited over that kind of gore? Probably not people we wanted in the shop and certainly not anyone we would want to meet in person.
   That said, I was a little surprised by recent social media reports that grim rock star Glenn Danzig was quoted stating opposition to Planned Parenthood (an organization that I actively support). Mr. Danzig has collaborated in the past with Tim Vigil and all I could think was,

   "Dude, some woman making the hardest decision of her life grosses you out but necrophilia doesn't? Who on earth have I been supporting with my record buying money?"

 I do know where I stand on the Planned Parenthood debate and as much as I support freedom of the press (I have sold many Tim Vigil titles through Randolph Comix) I am still seriously grossed out by these types of modern horror books (and movies, I groove on clever tension not gore) I still have a soft spot for vintage horror comics of my childhood and teen years and am always delighted to find some indie title keeping the flame alive.
 
 

It brings me joy to think that through local thrift stores some of these vintage inspired titles might wind up in the hands of some modern creepy minded kid just like me.

   Note the proper perspective the artist used on this cover, the hands might be weirdly distorted but they are placed in a realistic manner....

Wonder Woman

We are so excited for the new Wonder Woman movie!

    It looks like it's going to be an awesome flick and it is already helping out sales for Wonder Woman titles in our online shops.


    We loaded up our inventory on Doctor Strange books prior to that release thinking that it would help sales of those books but although we sold a couple, the flick didn't really help the sale of older comic books much at all. (I have a feeling that those great books would have sold anyway with or without the "help" of the movie release.)

    Perhaps, because Wonder Woman has a stronger pop culture presence (vintage comic books, tv shows, toys etc)  potential buyers are already hooked on her back story before the movie even comes out?

Begrudgingly, we might also admit that as sexy as we women here at Grrl Pickers Vintage/Randolph Comix find Benedict Cumberbatch, there probably is something a little more appealing to the public at large about a scantily clad woman kicking hard core real life butt than a mystical sorcerer cloaked head to toe in heavy robes conjuring solutions to mythical threats in less "real" universe.

  Wonder Woman might reside in the US and her traditional costume has always been red, white and blue but we should not forget that she was not born here and we are also really grooving on her accent in this incarnation. She is female, an immigrant and if this trailer is any indication, she is KICKING ASS!

    Perhaps a bit of foolish distraction from our real world threats but as distractions go, this seems to be the right one at just the right time.


Wonder Woman trailer on You Tube

   We can't wait to see the film and are very excited to see what it's landing in theaters tomorrow will do for our comic book sales!



 

 

Comic of the Day: Batman The New Adventures No.416

Batman, The New Adventures

Published: February 1988

"D.C. Comics Aren't Just For Kids!"

  Clearly the cover depicts more graphic violence than one would expect from a kids comic book. It's interesting to me that my reaction to this cover is a lot different than it would have been when I was spinning the comics rack at my local convenience store when I was growing up. (Sunny Corner Farms, Brookline, MA to be specific...)

   I was actually 17-18 years old when this was published and was more likely stocking the rack as I worked at my local Store 24 (Beacon Street, also Brookline, MA) but my point is that I would have totally paid absolutely no attention at all to this cover as I was more attracted to the creepy fantasy aspect of the revamped Ghost Rider that also came out around that time.

  Now tho? Yeah, this bothers me. The adult in me (who after 10 years working in convenience stores has had more than my fair share of guns, thank you very much) has a definite gut reaction to the realistic depiction of the gun in this villain's hand and even more emotion is evoked by the seemingly doomed young man on the ground.

(The fact that it's Robin? Meh. Robin has always bugged me to some degree but, this? Nah, he's an irritating gnat as a character but he doesn't deserve this. Or any of the later things that happened to him but I digress...)


 

 So yeah, clearly the cover even without this PMRC era style warning label, makes it clear this comic might not be appropriate for young kids.
 (High School aged convenience store clerks is debatable...)

 But there is quite a bit more to this issue than just the violent cover.
 
   Endless insinuations both subtle and overt have been made about a possible romantic relationship between Batman and Robin. Most of which I find just silly but I think that is because "my" Batman and Robin are the Adam West / Bert Ward campy TV variety that I loved as a kid. I view the relationship between the two characters as any 8 year old would, as presented, at face value and totally innocent and devoid of any romantic undertones.

   But to accept that we have to suspend our belief in the reality that ALL of our beloved childhood icons were not written and drawn by kids like us but by adults with adult feelings.

So yeah, whether we buy into the whole Batman and Robin as a couple idea, it's pretty undeniable that these pages illustrate very adult relationship emotions.

Still unsure? 

The rejected aging former partner giving advice to the new younger version of himself? 

Seems kind of serious adult behavior to me.

  Since the very beginning comic books have not been intended to be "Just For Kids" as supported by the whole Comics Code labeling system of the mid 1950's (History of the Comics Code of 1954 ) and I can't help but wonder if this book having been published shortly after the big PMRC record labeling crusade of the mid 1980's, was this label a wink to past crusades or a smart ploy to increase book sales in the same way that records with the RIAA Parental Advisory label sold more units to tantalized teens on the hormone driven 24/7 quest for adult ideas?

 -Laura