The REAL Annual (can't think of a snappy title for this one, sorry)

Next on the pile... This one!

It's the 1990 (as in, 1989) Real Ghostbusters annual, and this one actually DID arrive on the 25th day of December, all those years ago. Ghostbusters and its related media seems to be one of life's constants, at least in my experience. Early exposure and all that. And out of the four Real Ghostbusters annuals I've got over the years, this is the one that stands out for some fairly unique reasons...

The Annual from the Future

A curious thing I realised a couple of years ago - I was reading 2000 AD BEFORE I was reading the Beano. Well, not actually reading it, just looking at it. As the previous post mentioned, monsters are all I've ever really cared about for large portions of my life, and the particular issue of 2000 AD I remember having as a youngster was filled with the things. If I describe the setup, could someone point me in the direction of whatever issue it was? No? Well I will anyway. A load of monsters standing around having a discussion (about what I do not know - it's not like I was "reading" the thing), and one of them, a green-skinned woman, eventually gets a sword thrown through her. She carries on talking and removes it like it was nothing...

Well, over the years I've acquired and then got rid of THREE big stacks of 2000 AD comics, and that issue I remember was in the first pile. Why I got rid of them? Who knows? They're probably the ONLY comics I've ever let go, which is just not right. Anyway, I remember having 2000 AD comics at least a year before getting my first Beano or Dandy (and THOSE comics actually helped me learn to read!), so with that in mind it's only fair that a 2000 AD annual should be one of my favourites. This one, specifically:

Oh, and I definitely WON'T be getting this "top twenty" finished before Xmas, so it'll run over into June probably, but that's fine. 

A Marvellous Book

Bear with me here - this is a festive "mini series" sort of thing that I wasn't planning to do until December, but the reality is there probably won't be enough time in that month to do much... So it's being brought forward a bit. All the adverts have been on telly since March anyway, so I may as well.

RIGHT. The "theme" goes like this: What happens on the 25th December, usually? If you're aged between five and twelve, maybe beyond? You get ANNUALS, that's what. Nice hardback books, to keep you busy throughout the festive week. Some people grow out of them, most don't and end up with hundreds of the things stacked in the corner of the room twenty years down the line. Like the majority of people, I fall into the latter category, and so... Well, it's my Top Twenty-or-so Most Favourite Annuals Ever. In no particular order, and I probably won't get that many done by Christmas, but it's worth a go. And we're starting with a bloody Marvel book of all things.

Another "plug", why not?

Here's where I pretend I'm a "proper journalist" that gets things sent to him all the time for reviewing purposes, but the truth is just that a certain Mr. Adam Smith is an all-round nice person. Back when I first started "doing" things about the various Viz-like comics that've been and gone over the years, he sent me a near-complete run of Northern Lightz, for absolutely nothing. And this week, what's he send me? He sends me this:

It's one of those small-press things which are always interesting, if not always good. This one would've been "in the shops" now, except Mr. Smith got the cover the wrong way around before sending it to the printers, the silly bugger. So we'll call this the dodgy BETA-version, yes? Some stuff about Northern Lightz when I find the time, but for now a bit of plugging - my way of saying "Thanks" for the undeserved freebies.

If you're happy and you know it, give a honk.

Here's something new... As in, something that's available right now, and isn't a relic of the 1980s or 1990s. And I'm reviewing it! How interesting. It's two comics of the "small press" variety, which is what "underground" comics are called nowadays, I think. And they're both by a certain Mr. Turnock.

Continuing Diseases

Next on the pile is one that took a fair while to find... I only knew about this one through a now-missing post over on Lee Turnock's blog, but find it I eventually did, and what do you know - it's from the same part of the world as I am! Here it is, it's called Igor.

Is it any good? Of course not, but that's all part of the fun... Right?

Bowel-shifting

Every year since 1995, or at least whenever I've remembered or been able to, I try and find/purchase Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror, an annual anthology of "spooky" Simpsons comics. This year's was a bitter disappointment (in that it wasn't funny at all), but that's par for the course with The Simpsons these days.

Anyway, in that very first issue eighteen years ago, this page was in it:

That's Matt Groening listing a load of things that spooked him during his developing years. I'm going to have a go at doing that now! Probably the last opportunity I'll have to do something "thematic" for this month, so it's back to the comics after this. But just for now, here's as many things as I can remember that frightened, confused, perturbed or caused mild discomfort to me over the years...

Monster! Monster!

Don't suppose anyone remembers around this time last year? When I did a "feature" on the Children's Britannica Book of Ghosts? Well, I did, and now here's its counterpart/sequel - and it's all about monsters!

The REAL monster here is my inability to properly scan a hardback book held together with Sellotape, so expect slap-dash levels of image quality throughout.

A comic not of sight or of sound but of mind

Seeing as it's October and all that, here's something slightly "spooky" yet still in fitting with the "main" theme of the "project" that's "been" going on "here" for the "past few" months. Sort of. It's an oddity, that's for sure - something that from the cover looks like a parody of The Twilight Zone, but is actually several outdated parodies of cult TV shows and a handful of Zit reprints.

It's... The Twilight Clone, from 1991, and helmed by Spit! contributor, Mr. Michael Hingley. I can't find ANY information on this one, anywhere, and found it by chance in a box full of 2000AD back issues in a second-hand "collector's emporium" in Manchester, sometime last year. Something tells me that The Twilight Clone had big ambitions, and maybe something came of it, who knows? If that "something" ever DID happen, it didn't survive up to the Internet age, so here it is.