Super Goobers!

 One of my favorite conventions/tropes of American super hero comic books has always been the anthropomorphic funny animal super hero parody....characters such as DC Comics' CAPTAIN CARROT (and his Amazing Zoo Crew) and Marvel's PETER PORKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-HAM have amused and fascinated me since childhood, and this fascination stretches back to the Golden Age.  Admittedly, I've spent way too much time and money tracking down back issues of Fawcett's HOPPY THE MARVEL BUNNY, Charlton's ATOMIC MOUSE, and DC's FUNNY STUFF (home of Golden Age Flash parody, The Terrific Whatzit!)...

Electric Tiki's fantastic mini maquette from 2014 that's way too expensive for my tastes these days.

From Wikipedia:

"Super Goof is Goofy's superhero alter ego who gets his powers by eating super goobers (peanuts). Goofy became the first Disney character to also be a superhero, but several would follow, including Donald Duck as Paperinik.

The initial concept was developed by Disney Publications Dept. head George Sherman and Disney United Kingdom merchandising representative Peter Woods. It was passed on to Western Publishing scripter Del Connell who refined it, including the eventual device of peanuts providing superpowers.

The initial version of Super Goof appeared in "The Phantom Blot meets Super Goof", in Walt Disney's The Phantom Blot No. 2 (Feb. 1965) by Connell (story) and Paul Murry (art).  There Goofy mistakenly believes he has developed superpowers.  A second version appeared as an actual superhero in the four-page story "All's Well That Ends Awful" in Donald Duck No. 102 (July 1965), also by Connell and Murry."

The first two appearances of Super Goof

As I mentioned above, Gold Key's SUPER GOOF was a childhood favorite that slowly became the comic book equivalent of comfort food for me.  Any time I ran across a copy of the book in the wild, whether it be at an LCS, used bookstore, flea market, wherever...especially if it was cheap (it always was), I'd make the purchase.  Recently, I began the task of acquiring a complete run of the book, actually making a concentrated and focused effort to obtain the issues I need (at this point I own around 40 issues, including the first two appearances outside the ongoing solo series, a little over half of the book's 74 issue run).

Super Goof #1 (October 1965, Gold Key/ Western Publishing)

Most issues are fairly affordable, many lingering in LCS dollar boxes for decades gathering dust, wth one exception: Issue #61 from 1980...

Super Goof #61 (1980, Whitman/Western Publishing)

SUPER GOOF #61 has the distinction of being possibly the rarest Western Publishing book from their decades long history due to it having had no newsstand distribution at all, available only in select "Whitman 3 Packs" distributed primarily to toy stores in 1980, and  nobody really knows how many were printed and distributed for each title sold in this manner...or how many copies actually survive today.

High grade condition graded and slabbed copies tend to command prices in the $400 to $500 range these days.  

Hubba Hubba Hubba, Money Money Money,....Who Do Ya Trust?

36 years ago, June 23, 1989, I was sitting in a theater somewhere near Blue Hole, WV watching this....the 1989 Tim Burton directed BATMAN...

My parents were vacationing there, and they had drug 15 year old me and my younger sister along for the ride. After the day's vacation activities, instead of watching THE TERMINATOR for the fifth time on our motel's cable TV, I opted to walk down the street to a local cinema and watch the film I'd been eagerly awaiting for months. It was well worth the 4 dollar ticket price.

I've always been more of a fan of the newsstand edition cover of the 1989 DC Comics adaptation

"Partyman" by Prince....proof that not only was MTV a delightfully weird place in 1989, but promotional tie-ins for superhero movies started out being crazy bugnuts bananas....

The backstory on the development of Prince's BATMAN soundtrack album is insane, meaning there was practically none, some stories saying he turned a completed album to Warner Records in under two weeks. The structure of the album itself is chaotic, with no real connecting theme, compiled from a bunch of already recorded material from Prince's vault, in some cases literally Frankensteining 2 or 3 songs together, putting lyrics form one song onto melodies from another. So much so, that supposedly Warner A&R told him that they didn't know how to market any of it and there wasn't any material for breakout singles on it.

Prince's alleged response: "There's your album. Sell it." His work was done, and he had a pretty sweetheart final creative deal.

Then it became one of his best selling albums.

I've always been partial to two tracks on the album, "Electric Chair" and "Partyman". "Batdance" is just goofy enough that it feels fun without feeling like an obvious moneygrab with no thought put into it, and alot of Prince's diehard fans tend to dig the slow jam "Scandalous"....and, I will admit to having g a soft spot for the track "Trust".

"Hubba hubba hubba, money money money....Who do ya trust....."

Crisis on Earth 2!

 I'm a longtime fan of the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA (or, "JSA" to their friends), the world's first superhero team and inspiration for the more familiar to a general audience and contemporary JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA (Zack Snyder fans please hold your comments).

The 1st appearance of the JSA, All-Star Comics #3 (December 1940, DC Comics)

I discovered the JSA via one of the many now classic annual JSA/JLA crossovers that used to be a staple inside the pages of the JUSTICE LEAGUE's book, but my love for the team was really cemented during what I refer to as the "Roy Thomas Era" of the team's lore and canon.  The Thomas-written ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY INC., and YOUNG ALL-STARS were must-have regular comic book reading material for me as a child and teenager.  A childhood fascination with anything pop culture and media centric that was produced during the 1930s/1940s....comic books, films, classic radio shows, pulp novel reprints...fueled this obsession with superheroes and comics of the era that continues to this day.

All-Star Squadron #1 (September 1981, DC Comics)

Infinity Inc. #1 (March 1984, DC Comics)

Young All-Stars #1 (June 1987, DC Comics)

Now, being a hardcore fan of the property who has a crazy strong completist urge has caused me over the course of my 46 year-long path of comic book fandom to put together a pretty decent JSA collection, owning nearly everything from the earliest Silver Age appearances forward...

The first two JLA/JSA crossovers, JLA #21-22 and #29-30, from 1963 and '64, respectively

Side note:  One of my favorite issues of Silver Age JLA has always been issue #51, which is the conclusion of the introduction of the character of Zatanna.  I've always felt that it was sort of an "almost JSA crossover" due to the Golden Age connection to Zatanna father, Zatara the Magician.  Also, can this storyarc be considered the first multi-title company crossover being that the first four parts of the story are in four other titles (HAWKMAN #4, THE ATOM #19, GREEN LANTERN #42, and DETECTIVE COMICS #355)?

Recently, I completed a run of the Bronze Age incarnation of the JSA's home title, ALL-STAR COMICS, filling a gap I'd had in my collection for years.  In 1975, after about 25 years of being a defunct title, DC Comics decided to relaunch the book continuing it's original numbering and proceeded to keep it in print for another 17 issues.  This run of the title is of interest due to the first appearance of Power Girl (the Earth 2 equivalent of Supergirl) and the establishment of the focus on the team being generational in nature, with an emphasis on legacy.

All-Star Comics #58 (February 1976, DC Comics)

The reason why it took me so long was simply due to me being an old, forgetful man who'd totally forgotten that I didn't own a complete run of the title.  It was a pretty simple task, the only issue that's slightly pricey is issue #58 due to it being the first appearance of the aforementioned Power Girl, decent copies going for around the $125 to $150 range, and the rest can be had for less than 10 bucks apiece, with exception of the last few issues being slightly higher, probably due to the early appearances of the Bat-family tie-n character of the Huntress.

Deep, Dark Depression, Excessive Misery

 Chorus:

Gloom, despair, and agony on me
Deep, dark depression, excessive misery
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all
Gloom, despair, and agony on me

-“Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me!”

Recorded by Buck Owens and Roy Clark

Lyrics by Bernie Brillstein, Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth

From Wikipedia-

"Hee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with the fictional rural "Kornfield Kounty" as the backdrop. It aired from 1969 to 1993, and on TNN from 1996 to 1997.

The show was inspired by Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, but centered on country music, rural rather than pop culture–inspired humor, and with far less topical material."

Hee-Haw #1 (July 1970, Charlton)

Please allow me to explain my love for HEE-HAW...

I grew up in Appalachia, with one foot in southern Ohio and the other in northern Kentucky...to be specific, the Adams County region of Ohio and near and around Maysville, KY.  There's a lot of cultural cross pollination going on there.  A friend once told me that, "the Ohio River Valley is about as Southern as you can get without actually being in the South".  So, needless to say that there's an awful lot of Southern tropes and stereotypes going on, such as hillbillies, red necks...y'know, "local yokels".  The last stereotype we feel comfortable as Americans making fun of.  If you don't believe it, look at the lasting popularity of Larry the Cable Guy, but I digress...

Christ....this is actually a thing.

There's an awful lot of love for that ol' mixture of 1940s Western Swing and Cowboy songs, Country and Western music in the River Valley, and I'll admit that I'm part of that problem.  But, my preferences in the genre are kinda specific...none of this stuff being pushed as "Country Music" today qualifies.  At this point, it's all just pop music sang with a nasal flair.  I'm of the opinion that the genre started moving in this direction in the early 1990s with the immerguamce of the "Young Country" movement and artists such as Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus beginning to chart on pop charts and gaining mainstream audience popularity.  I'm more of a "Classic Country" fan....the sad weepy barroom stuff from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.  And HEE-HAW (the television show) was a staple of my 1970s/1980s childhood.  As a guitar enthusiast, I've alway been a fan of longtime co-host Buck Owens (and the "Bakersfield Sound" subgenre that he was the primary star of), so me being a fan of HEE-HAW is kind of a no-brainer.

Hee-Haw Magazine #1 (May 1970, Charlton)

Charlton Comics (God Bless'Em) was crazy enough to license the show in 1970 and produced seven issues of a standard color comic book and 13 issues of a magazine which was less like a black and white comics magazine and more of a Country Music centric version of one of Charlton's other publications, HIT PARADER with the occasional one panel gags and a little fumetti work.  Both books are kinda hard to find in decent condition, and trying to collect a complete set of the magazine has been the bane of my existence for nearly three decades now.  At last count, I own 8 of the 13 issues.  It amuses me to no end that I live in a world where there's not one, but two Hee-Haw related comics publications.

Hee-Haw Magazine #12 (September 1974)

I've always jokingly referred to the cover of issue #6 as "the Savage Sword of Junior Samples".  Don't know why...just me amusing myself with nerdy fanboy attempts at humor....

Hee-Haw Magazine #6 (March 1971, Charlton)