Family Christmas

We took it easy the past two days. Did much of nothing. Communed with the family. Ate much good food. Watched movies. Relaxed.

Gifts on Christmas Eve under the little Christmas tree.

EXTRA! EC Tries to Survive!

There needs to be several volumes of a good and comprehensive history of EC Comics. It probably produced the finest quality comic stories of any commercial publisher the business ever had. Fronted by William Gaines, he led a small number of fine editors who assembled the best artists and writers who were then floating around the industry. The reputation of the company is today legendary. Indeed, the reputation of the company in its finest days was also legendary...but not in a good way.

For EC was infamous in the eyes of the mundane public. It was singled out for a number of reasons and by a number of sources as one of the worst influences on then-modern American youth. Attacks from all sides eventually succeeded in taking the company to its knees, and it only survived by reducing itself to a single title and by fleeing the comic book format and going to magazine format as Mad Magazine. The move eventually made Gaines the single most wealthy publisher in the US. But the rest of the company faded away and became the legend.

For a brief time after the forces of evil had beaten down the comics industry, EC tried several methods to cooperate with the newly-formed Comics Code Authority and to circumvent the Authority. Gaines and his editors produced a line of more family-friendly comics, while at the same time moving a few titles to magazine size and avoiding the Code entirely. However, despite a few heroic efforts, the new lines failed. The fans who had so adored the gritty, cutting stories EC had provided just did not appreciate the pablum the company was reduced to offering, and those fans abandoned EC.

Today I got one of these later efforts by the publisher to try to spark the same electrical charge they'd generated with titles like TALES FROM THE CRYPT, and HAUNT OF FEAR, and WEIRD SCIENCE-FANTASY, etc. These new ones, though, were pedestrian books with no shock endings and almost no violence and not really much in the way of tension. The titles, while a noble effort, failed.

EXTRA was just such a comic book. It featured stories about investigative reporters digging to find the answers to crooked deals and violent crimes (which are never shown, or referred to in the mildest of terminology). Gone was the gore of the old EC. Vanished was the sarcasm and the tone of fatal irony. EC's bosses tried, but they failed. And their enemies laughed. Having cut off their own noses, they laughed.

My copy of EXTRA #3, cover art by the great Johnny Craig.

Bummer, Jack!

When I was a kid I totally freaked out trying to get my hands on a copy of Fantastic Four #25. I was already a huge Jack Kirby/Marvel Comics fan and had heard about the issue, but had never been able to land a copy in my dad's store or warehouse. It just wasn't in there for some reason. I really wanted to see Ben Grimm and the Hulk fight it out and have the world know once and for all that Ben Grimm was the toughest of the two.

Finally....FINALLY my dad got in a run of Fantastic Four that included issue #25. (At the time, issue #67 or so would have been the current issue.) I put it in a bag with a stack of other comics I wanted to read and brought them home from my parents' bookstore. And I was in super-hero heaven! Jack Kirby knew how to write a great battle story! It was what I had been expecting and hoping to read...except that Ben Grimm lost to the Hulk. And it wasn't a TKO, either. The Hulk beat him fair and square and the outcome was a definite loss for Grimm.

However, the issue ended on a very dramatic note with Ben Grimm swearing that he was going to find the Hulk (who was terrorizing New York) and beat him. All I had to do was find issue #26! It hadn't been in the run my dad had picked up, so I was forced to wait. It took a few weeks, but at last he bought a big stack of comics with a copy of FF #26. I didn't even wait to take it home to read but sat down behind the counter and read then and there.

And man was I bummed out!

It was a rip! The issue does seem to begin where the last issue left off, with Ben and the Hulk continuing their monstrous fist fight. But this was no rematch between Grimm and the Hulk! It was mainly a free-for-all comedy when the Avengers showed up to take the Hulk back under their wing. I will assume Kirby was trying to recreate some of the wackiness of the movie IT'S A MAD, MAD,MAD, MAD WORLD, because that all I could compare it to while I was reading it. Gone was that final dramatic panel from FF #25. Drama, this was not! In fact, the Hulk and Ben don't even really get to fight in issue #26! They come close, but a steel girder gets in the way, and then the Avengers muck up the works.

Still, it was a comic by Jack Kirby, and while it wasn't what I had expected, it was still a lot of fun. And of course I have a copy in my collection these days, and I take it out and recall what it was like to read it that first time in my parents' used bookstore in Atlanta GA in 1967.

My copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #26 (Written and illustrated by Jack Kirby).

Do You Really Need to Take This Trip?

Almost every comic collector I know carries a want-list around with him. This is, of course, the smart thing to do. Because my collection is relatively small and centered on a limited axis, I've never written up a comprehensive want list. However, a couple of recent things have made me decide to create a decent list.

I do collect EC Comics in a small way. I only pick them up occasionally, and only when I can get a really good deal on the book. Thus, my collection of EC comics is rather small. No need, really, for a want list. But a little over a month ago I managed to do something that I would have thought most improbable:

I bought an EC comic book that I already have! It's a great book and I won't have any trouble selling it or trading it away, but just the fact that I bought a book that I already had when I don't own that many of the title (or even that publisher)...well, it made me realize I need that list. And soon.

Because this week I came very close to buying another comic I already have in my collection: TUROK #6. This book has a most memorable cover and an even more memorable scene. It has a giant gorilla on the cover and in the story! How could I NOT recall that I already have that issue? Well, I had forgotten that I own it, and came with a lizard's whisker of buying another copy. That I don't need.

And that was it. I've already started work on a comprehensive want list.

Whoa! I almost bought this book when I already had this perfectly good copy!

Counter-Revolutionaries

In the old days I used to collect original comic art. After a while I got out of that hobby and sold off all of my artwork. It was a weird business. So much artwork was basically stolen from the artists, mainly by the publishers. A few people--notably Neal Adams--tried to do something about all of that stolen art, but eventually even he had to surrender and call it a day.

Sometimes even other comic book artists would steal from their fellows.

I used to know of a certain inker (who will here remain nameless) who would lightbox pencilled pages that he liked and ink them and turn them in as the originals to the publisher (one of the big two). The pencil artists he'd been hired to ink--as far as I heard--never suspected a thing (the inker was pretty good at supplanting the originals without anyone noticing). The upshot? Said inker had original un-inked pencil pages by some of the best in the business that he would use to trade and sell without the initial artists ever knowing what was going on.

I discovered this when I bought some pages from this inker, thinking I was getting artwork done by a certain well-known pencil artist. The pencil art was, of course, still in the possession of said inker, who later sold the raw, un-inked pencils for a considerable sum.

Just one of the reasons I got out of comic art collecting.

Since I sold this piece a couple of weeks ago, I have only a few pages of art remaining. I bought this one from an agent dealing directly with the artist (Willam Van Horn--to my way of thinking the best Disney comics artist around these days).

Old Tradition

For many years Carole, Andy, and I used to ride up to the mountains of North Carolina to a choose and cut tree farm to get our Christmas tree. This was always a very important and fun trip for us. Most of the time we'd encounter snow, but a few of the years we got a taste of hellish global warming and the weather would be absolutely hot.

But after Andy grew up the trips to the mountain to get a tree seemed less important and less fun. So in 2010 we stopped going to the high country to find a tree and just got an artificial one.

I sure do miss those trips and the excitement of going to find a tree, preferably in the snow.

This was the last time we went up to Sparta NC to find a tree, and this is the tree we got. It was December 19, 2009 and the mountains had just been delivered a decent snowstorm.

I'm pretty sure this is the 2008 tree. That's our cat Sophie strolling by.

Strange Rocks

Some weird rocks I encountered on a hike to the summit of Flat Top Mountain in Virginia. It's one of the famous "Peaks of Otter" along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

"Hey! Put those back the way you found them!"

Wilderness Wound

When I was spending two weeks in the Colorado wilderness in September, I walked into a dry branch while searching for a suitable tree to hang my food for the night (you'd better use a "bear bag" when in such a place, or face the consequences). Said branch rammed into the cartilage in my right ear. Much pain, much gushing of blood. As best I could I cleaned out the wound and disinfected it. This happened first night in the wilderness. Over the course of the following eight days the wound scabbed over and began to heal.
 
Two weeks after arriving back home, after the wound was reduced to just a small bit of scar tissue, it suddenly welled up red and full of pus. Carole lanced it for me and...out came a chunk of wood as big as a fingernail. Not the size of a piece of a fingernail. No. As big as a whole fingernail.

Yep. Gross.

This was the wound a few days after the incident. I didn't know it then, but there was a huge chunk of Engelmann spruce wood lodged in the cartilage of my ear. It would emerge three weeks later.

In addition to the ear injury, I also got a small cut on my left index finger. The third night in the wilderness I was putting up my tent. It was cold, damp, and sleet was falling. So I was in something of a hurry to get my tent assembled so that I could get my down bag unpacked and myself into it to warm up and relax.

As I was fitting a tent pole into the fly, I pinched the skin on my left index finger between the grommet and the aluminum pole. Looking at it, there was just a slight irritation but not a visible wound. Later, once I was in my tent I took a second look and washed the finger with an alcohol swab, put some ointment on it, and an adhesive bandage.

The next morning the insignificant bit of pinching was now a noticeable wound. Just a tiny cut, but it was no longer just a point of pinched skin. I washed with water and swabbed it with alcohol again, put on more antibiotic ointment and a bandage.

Over the course of the next few days, the insignificant cut began to deepen and widen until it was an almost perfect red circle reaching deep into the dermis. I could look down into the wound and it did not look good. Also, my finger was throbbing and slightly inflamed. No amount of washing and bandaging seemed to do any good. I was a bit concerned.

On the last morning in the Weminuche I boiled up a pot of water and scrubbed my hands completely, using a cloth to scrub the wound as best I could, lathering on the soap and applying more alcohol to the cut. We were heading back to the train to take us to civilization, so if it didn't improve, I'd have access to a clinic if it came to that.

However, after one night back in town the cut quickly began to heal. Just having access to a hot shower and more air (we went from averaging 11,000 feet above sea level to 6,000 feet back in Durango) meant that the cut could heal more effectively. In no time at all the nasty-looking circle of angry tissue had closed up and was healing.

Having experienced this little bit of difficulty with small wounds in the wilderness, with limited ability to deal with them, I know in no uncertain terms that human beings would wither quickly if suddenly denied the luxuries to which we've become accustomed. I'm surprised we lasted long enough to discover the technology that has allowed us to wreck Mother Earth.
 

Comic Book Show Today

I went to the Charlotte Comicon today. It's a local one-day show that's always a lot of fun. The costume contest was especially good this time. I also completed my Amazing Spider-Man collection by nabbing the last two issues I needed.

Amazing Spider-Man #1

Amazing Spider-Man #2

The Joker needs no introduction.

This gentleman was dressed as Wilson Fisk, aka The Kingpin.

Gandalf the Gray and Bilbo Baggins were in attendance, also.

Last Snow Hike

It has been over a year since I've seen snow here in North Carolina. It has snowed since the last time I was able to experience the stuff, just not when and where I've been present. So the last time I was able to hike in the snow here in North Carolina was January 16, 2012.

Because of the effects of human-caused global warming, it just doesn't snow here in North Carolina all that often. There was a time, of course, when it snowed a lot here in my current state of residence. But not anymore. The companies who make sure that we get so much of our energy needs from oil, coal, and natural gas have seen to it that there are no other options. Things are just going to get worse as far as our climate is concerned.

So, in honor of that last time I was able to hike in snow here in my own state of North Carolina, here are a few photographs from that hike on Tanawha, also known as Grandfather Mountain.

This part of Tanawha/Grandfather Mountain is called "The Boone Bowl" and is thought to be one of the few glacial cirques formed in the southern Appalachians. The scientific jury is still out on whether or not it's a glacial cirque, but having seen plenty of them now in my experience as a hiker and backpacker, it sure does look like one.

Two of my hiking pals, Bob Johnson and Andy Kunkle.

View from one side of the "Boone Bowl".

Fresh, soft, dry snow.

What ya call yer powder. Light, fluffy powder.

The Later Ditko Years at Charlton

Some of the toughest Ditko items to find are actually some of the books he created later in his career. Steve Ditko worked for decades for Charlton Comics. The page rates there were far lower than with other companies, but the work was steady for him and so he kept at it, working for Charlton when other artists of his caliber would not have done so.

Most of the work he did for Charlton in the 1980s was very different from the kinds of things he had illustrated earlier in his career. Gone was the detail and the obvious expenditure of great labor into his pages. He still showed a definite brilliance for layout and continuity, but he was just doing a draftsman's job at this point and, to me, the heart was not there.

He could still shine brilliantly when he wanted to, but by and large this was just work to pay the bills, and you don't see much in the way of inspiration in the artwork that he did for Charlton during this stretch.

Still, it's Ditko, and just about anything he did is worth looking at, and worth having in my collection.

This book just has a Ditko cover, with no accompanying story by him.

This cover is a busy one and, to me, quite captivating. It strikes me as the kind of thing that would have been rejected in his days working under editor Stan Lee at Marvel, but which passed muster at the less exacting editorial oversight at Charlton.

Reminiscent of the kind of monster Ditko would cook up for Goodman in the old days at pre-hero Marvel.

And occasionally the kind of thing that reminded me of the work of Ditko's youth.

Christmas On the Way.

My mother-in-law's Christmas decorations.

Minor Addition to the Collection

I picked up a nice copy of TALES TO ASTONISH #56. Marvel was still publishing the backlog of monster and science-fiction stories in their inventory when this issue appeared. It took Lee a few years to clear that stuff out after Kirby and Ditko increased sales for the company with their superhero creations.

It is stories such as the lead one here that are among the many proofs of who was doing the writing at Marvel. It was not the editor who was claiming to be the "writer", but was in fact that various artists who were plotting, penciling, and in some cases inking the stories all on their own. Witness the wild swings in writing styles between stories that were supposedly only illustrated by Kirby, Ditko, and Ayers. You can tell by reading the work of these three men that three different men were writing them. Not one writer, but three. Not the editor, but the artist/writers.

Jack Kirby wrote.

Steve Ditko wrote.

Dick Ayers wrote.

The editor edited (but did not write).

I was very pleased with the condition of this book. An early appearance of Giant Man, formerly known as Ant Man.

Back cover. These guys must have done well with their ads on Marvel's books.

Stuff While I'm Busy

Stuff to look at while I'm writing.

Unofficial trail on the side of Avalanche Peak in Yellowstone National Park.

My son, Andy, in Yellowstone National Park. His favorite place so far on Earth, so I must take him back there.

Big Spring, Missouri. The largest freshwater spring in North America.

Seneca Rock and the mountains beyond, West Virginia.

Monkey Butt!

This is an unsolicited endorsement of Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. As a laborer I use it almost daily! One of the best products for the active person in your household. It also comes in Ladies Anti-Monkey Butt variety!

MONKEY BUTT POWDER! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Altitude Sickness Sucks Chimp Ass

On my trip to Colorado I discovered that I do get altitude sickness. I can get over it, provided I have enough time to acclimatize. Unfortunately, it seems as though I require about ten days to get used to any altitude over 11,500 feet or so.

Altitude sickness was a very weird illness for me. It was extremely uncomfortable. At its worst, I felt as though I was skating the verge of a seriously bad situation. It may very well be that I was close to suffering something worse than what I ended up experiencing. But each time I felt it getting really awful, I'd stop to rest and drink some water. In addition, I'd generally also try to choke down some food. These things--rest, water, food--seemed to calm the symptoms and keep them at bay long enough for me to continue onward and upward.

I'm surprised I was able to keep pushing on in a few situations. It was almost always heading toward a high pass or trying to push over a particularly steep ridge when I'd suffer the most. Only at the very end of the trip was I finally accustomed to the altitude.

Some of the following photographs were taken by me in a generally ill and sometimes addled state.

This is a terminal moraine that we encountered on the way to Chasm Lake on the highest peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was starting to feel a bit crappy at around this point, which was in fact not a lot above tree line.

This is the kind of thing I went to Colorado to see. An enormous ridge looming like the prow of a fantastic ship in the clouds. I was so woozy and wonky and nauseous by this time that my companions had passed me by, one of them worrying about my physical and mental state. Even I realized that I was babbling nonsense. It was like being in a fever dilerium when you know you're not making sense, but there's nothing you can do about it but continue to try to make yourself understood. I did not want to turn back at this point and not see Chasm Lake, so I kept going (albeit at the pace of a wounded snail).

Chasm Lake. It was very cold up there and very cloudy. Sleet rained down on me and the wind made me feel very cold. All I could do was lie in the rocks and take photos from a reclining position. I felt like Hell.

This was taken on a mountainside trail below treeline. I didn't feel too bad at this spot, in the Weminuche Wilderness.

I hiked up to just below a glacial lake to get this shot. We had awakened to newly fallen snow and it was pretty cold, but there wasn't much wind. Clouds were moving in, though, and we had to break camp and push on. I was high enough for the altitude to get to me, though.

Another high altitude shot. This was one of the mountains we wanted to see: Rio Grande Pyramid. In the planning stages I was supposed to have climbed this one. But with the nausea and shortness of breath, there was no way. So seeing it from a distance was the best I was going to get.

 Where I began to learn about altitude sickness. On Long's Peak on the Chasm Lake Trail.

THE LIVING END

Since I'm so busy working on new novels, here's a reminder of one of my published novels: THE LIVING END.

Novel Portion

Here's another section of the young adult fantasy novel I've been chipping away at for years.

ISAAC'S QUEST

Novel Portion

By James Robert Smith

Copyright 2012

     Before the sun was up, there was a knock on the door. It was very loud, and you could tell there was a lot of muscle behind the knuckles that were rapping on the hardwood. Even in my room upstairs I could hear it, although I was a light sleeper and such noises could easily wake me. I’d slept with my window open and the room was chilled with the fresh air of a mountain spring morning. Into my room came the smells of chickens, cats, and our dog Rufus. I could scent nearby fields where cattle grazed beyond our ten acres of pulpwood trees. The pine trees were ours; the fields belonged to Mr. Wishon, for whom I often worked fixing fences, raking hay, and feeding his steers and milk cows.

     As I sat in bed, my father was coming up the narrow staircase to my room. There was nothing on that floor but my bedroom, a crawlspace, and a very small bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower stall. My twelve by twelve bedroom was full of trophies and books and balsa wood airplanes my dad and I had painstakingly constructed and carefully painted over the years of my childhood.

     I looked at the replicas of World War II –era planes and swung my legs off the mattress and stood before he could get to the door. Opening it, I caught my dad as he made the last stair. “I heard him knocking,” I said.

     “Good. Get dressed. He isn’t a patient sort. Never was.”

     “All right,” I told him. Who was this guy? Why had I never heard them mention him if we owed him so much?

     As quickly as I could, I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I was only shaving once a week in those days. I pulled on some clean blue jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and my hiking boots. When I pulled the boots from under my bed, there was the faint smell of dried cow shit; I’d forgotten to clean them the last time I’d taken the flatbed trailer into Mr. Wishon’s field to spread hay. I took the stairs two at a time, but made hardly a sound as I came to the bottom of the stairs. My father was sitting in the kitchen, a cup of coffee steaming in front of him. He nodded his head toward the door and I went through it and onto the front porch. Isaac was waiting.

     He still wore that same black leather jacket. Up close, I could see dark areas on it where there had once been patches that had been torn off. There were still a few stringy threads hanging on where the patches had been. I towered almost a foot over him, but his barrel chest was probably as vast as my own. He had his hands out of his pockets and his fingers were gnarled, as if carved from weathered oak. His knuckles seemed almost to be callused. And I noticed that he had a slightly bow-legged stance that showed through the tight khaki jeans that were pulled on over thickly muscled legs. He wore what appeared to be expensive cowboy boots—ostrich leather I later learned. You could see pucker marks where the feathers had once been anchored to skin.

     Isaac tipped his Stetson back and for the first time in my life I had a good look at his face. He was beyond strange. He was as ugly a human being as I had ever seen, barring those who are deformed. And I wasn’t certain that he wasn’t stricken in such a way. Most of his jaw was covered in a reddish-gray beard that was almost like copper wire. He seemed to be virtually chinless, and I could understand why such a man would grow a beard to hide that lack of a feature. Isaac’s eyes were large, wide-set, and very blue: the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Under his thick, brushy, unkempt hair was a virtual ridge of bone that overhung his eyes and made it appear as if he was constantly scowling. His nose was thick, appeared to have been broken too many times to count, and his nostrils flared widely.

     Offering his hand to me, he said, “I’m Isaac.”

      I took it, feeling what seemed to be the hardest hand I’d ever encountered. And I’m accustomed to shaking hands with men who lift weights for the better part of the day. “I know. My dad told me.”

     Isaac pointed toward the slopes that led up to the top of a small peak near my father’s house. “Let’s go for a walk in the forest. Away from everyone else. I have some important things to tell you.” With that he trotted down the stairs of our porch to the lawn and started marching toward the forest, knowing I’d be right beside him.

Wanted: Solitude!

I need to go to a state park or wilderness. I need some solitude and clean air and Mother Nature's silence (no machinery).

Linville Gorge Wilderness area, taken along the Kistler Highway (name of the "highway" is misleading--it's actually a sometimes poorly maintained gravel road. the name is left over from days long past when it was, in fact, considered a major road).

Cathedral State Park in West Virginia. One of only a handful of patches of virgin hemlock forest remaining in the entire state.

Blackwater River Gorge in Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia.

Lindy Point, Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia.

South Mountains Game Lands, North Carolina.

Mackey Mountain old growth forest, Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina.

I honestly can't recall the name of this waterfall. I want to say "Blue Hole" in eastern Tennessee.

Roan High Knob, Tennessee. (One of Tennessee's 6,000-foot summits.

The summit of Unaka Mountain on the TN/NC border. Walk west and you're in Tennessee. Stroll to the right and you're standing in North Carolina. The Appalachian Trail runs over the top.

Spruce trees in a heavy mist, summit of Unaka Mountain.