Countdown to Halloween Day 27: Anthologies - Comic Books!

Hello everyone! Tonight I'm back on anthologies, but this time it's all about comic books! I pretty much just dug out all of the anthology horror comic books I could find in my collection (there are more but I FRUSTRATINGLY couldn't find them all. It's driving me INSANE!!!)

Here's a nice group shot of all the comics, scattered on my desk. I kind of just love the look and feel of this picture. But let's dig in, shall we?

If you're looking for some sort of well-thought-out, archival history of anthology horror comics, you have come to the wrong blog. Pretty much I'm just going to be pointing at stuff and going: "Hey isn't this cool?" for this entire post. What I really want to focus on is the presence of a "host" or some sort of framing story that keeps the anthology format moving. So the comics that lack this aren't going to get much more than a quick cover shot before I move on. First up: House of Mystery!

This one is a favorite for various different reasons.

First up, is Cain. Yes, THAT Cain. As in Cain of Cain and Abel. If you are even passing familiar with DC's House of Mystery (and it's brother book, the House of Secrets) then you will know that Cain, the first murderer is the host of House of Mystery, where he delights in repeatedly murdering his brother Abel in various nasty ways. Cain lives in the House of Mystery, Abel in the House of Secrets. The Houses and the brothers are actually canonical DCU locations and characters, and have been used in stories alongside superheroes, and arguably most famously as a part of Neil Gaiman's run on "The Sandman" where the brothers play rather large roles in the stories. The only issue I own of the classic series is the issue where they announce the series is being cancelled, in October of 1983. Ho-Hum. 

There was a reprint special put out in 1998 by the DC/Vertigo imprint with 10 different stories collected from the House of Mystery comic, as well as "PLOP!" another comic that featured Cain and Abel. The framing story was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Sergio Aragones. The stories contained within are prime examples of House of Mystery storytelling, and what I've come to realize is that while the stories were often clever and even beautifully illustrated, they were always a bit rushed.

The House of Mystery was taken over by the Mistress of the Dark herself, Elvira in 1986. Apparently this was only an 11 issue run, and I was lucky enough to find the 7th issue in the series in a recent trip to the Big Chicken Barn. This is a "Special Sci-Fi Issue!" She and the House banter back and forth quite a bit in the framing sequences, and apparently it is her mission to track down the missing Cain. This all takes place during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event.

I think probably the most exciting thing about this comic book is the offer to join the Elvira fan club though. I mean... for just less than 8 buck I get an autographed 8x10, a newsletter, a bumper sticker, a mini-poster decal, AND a Button!? If I wasn't afraid of just wasting 8 bucks, I would totally send out for this tomorrow, just to see what happens.

Another DC horror anthology comic is "The Witching Hour" which featured three witches. These witches were Mordred, Mildred, and Cynthia.

These witches would also come to be very important in Neil Gaiman's run on "The Sandman" as well as earning themselves a mini-series called "WitchCraft" in 1994 written by James Robinson, and illustrated by 4 different artists:

The "Witchcraft" miniseries both is and isn't a horror anthology in and of itself. It tells four distinct stories, but they are stories of reincarnation and revenge, and they all tie back directly to the framing sequence. I'm making the case here and now that this actually IS a form of anthology storytelling, albeit one a great deal more structured and intertwined than most.

The next pile of comic books I want to focus on are the ones sent to me by my online friend, John Gaither of the Robot Monster Space Super Hero blog (say THAT 5 times fast!) who regularly floors me with his kindness and generosity! Of the 5 issues you see above, the "Ripley's Believe it Or Not: True Ghost Tales," and the DC comics, "Ghosts" did not have a framing story or "host" character, so I won't be delving in past the covers... But the remaining three had some fun characters to welcome us in.

"All New Midnight Tales" from Charlton Comics  stars The Midnight Philosopher, Professor Cyrus Coffin and his niece Arachne, and apparently, the theme of this particular comic was that they would head into a mysterious locale or situation each issue, and then the stories included would reveal clues as to the nature of the mystery. An interesting idea.

Next from DC comics we have "Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion", and its host, Charity! This is a pretty cut and dry set up with Charity popping in to give us an introduction to each tale, and a closing anecdote after each one wraps up. Apparently Charity there went on to become a supporting character in the Starman series.

"Scary Tales" was originally a Charlton comic as well, but the copy John sent me here is a reprint put out just a couple of years later by "Modern Comics" which I find very interesting! Countess R.H. Von Bludd is our host, and as this is the very first issue, we are treated to a collection of vampire stories, and more than one of them feature her in them!

The Charlton comic "Monster Hunters" is a straight up anthology with no host from 1976, and "The Silver Scream" is a reprinted collection put out by "Recollections" (Lorne-Harvey Publications) back in 1991. We're not going to pull back the covers on either of them. Instead, let's take a closer look at...

"Grimm's Ghost Stories" from Whitman Publishing, circa 1978. As far as I can tell, the host here is the titular "Grimm" who is a clotheshorse hag who changes her outfit for every story. She dresses as a fisherman for the first story, a bullfighter for another, etc. I love the guy's quote above: "I made a date with a dead woman-- and there's no way to break it!"

Edgar Allan Poe's Haunt of Horror is a much more recent affair, although it's still almost a decade old, having been published back in 2006. It is a part of the Marvel MAX imprint, which was for mature readers only. The stories are all loosely based around the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, and while some of the tales are literally interpreted, some of them are veeery subjective. There is no framing device, per se, but we do get this guy in the front cover of each issue:

Uncle Deadgar! And each issue is presented by the "Dead Poe Society" which gave me a chuckle.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention some of the MOST famous anthology horror comics of all times: The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Horror, and of course: Tales From the Crypt! The issues I own are all reprints that were put out in the early 90's. Each issue is technically a reprint of two comics, the first being the title comic, and the second one being "Weird Science Fantasy" or "Crime SuspenStories" or some other random EC comic from back in the day. Of course, you talk about classic EC horror comics without taking a look at their three horror hosts:

The Cryptkeeper! This guys quite a bit different than the Cryptkeeper we know and love from the HBO anthology show!

The old witch is the primary host of "The Haunt of Fear," though all three hosts actually show up in all three of EC's horror comics.

And I'm not even sure why they needed a Vault Keeper. He seems a bit redundant, honestly. Basically the Cryptkeeper in a hoodie. Like I said, if you were expecting to be educated or otherwise enlightened in any way by this post, I feel you must understand by now that this is simply not going to happen.

And that's all I have for tonight folks! Just a weird and wacky melange of comics that all happen to be horror anthologies! I'll be back soon enough with some Graverobbing Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

RETURN of the BIN OF AWESOME!!! 2015 Summer (Canadian) Edition!!!

So for the past two Summers, I have been ridiculously lucky to somehow have a bin of toys almost drop into my lap. And every year I try to chronicle the contents of the bin over the course of several blog posts, (Part 5 of the FIRST bin can be found here, with links to the previous 4 entries, detailing the rest of the bin... and Part 3 of the SECOND bin with links, etc, etc) with limited success... And both of those Bins Full of Awesome came from the same neighborhood guy who sold them to me.

You always remember your first... Bin of Awesome...
(I never got a photo of bin #2 because it was partially filled with rainwater
and time was a factor in salvaging some toys.)

This summer I was lucky once again to receive a Bin of Awesome... but this time from a very unexpected source: CANADA. 

Yes, I have altered the shipping labels to obscure my address.
That's why it looks like that. Just relax. 

Yes... you read that right... CANADA. I have a podcasting friend, Chris Gaida, from my days on Geek Fallout, who I THOUGHT I was trading just a handful of comic books with. I sent him a small parcel of comic books and a couple of months later... this thing lands on my doorstep. From CANADA. Thus, saving me from a Bin-of-Awesome-Less Summer! Let's rip the lid off this sucker and see what was inside it shall we? (Oh, and FYI, I'm going to cover everything in this one post and skip the multi-part nonsense because the Halloween season is drawing near, and I'm limited in the number of posts I can crank out between now and September 30th. So you get it all one-and-done, baby!)

Right after wrenching off the lid, a gust of cold, Canadian wind puffed out in my face, temporarily blinding me. But then I was greeted by the sight above. Goodies!!!  I'll reveal the layers of the bin as they were revealed to me. I had my camera in hand as I went through everything, so you are seeing pictures of the first moments I laid eyes on everything in the bin myself.

So, without further ado, let us dig in!

On the topmost layer, I was greeted by a crossover issue of the X-Men, featuring Power Pack (more on "The Pack" a bit later) an issue of "Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen" AND an issue of Amazing Stories ("Watch the NBC TV Series...") this is all EXACTLY up my alley so far... Let's keep on digging.

This was... unexpected... to say the very least. Not ONE... but TWO carded Dr. Killemoffs from the Toxic Crusaders action figure line. These were put out by Playmates back in 1991 and they were a very close rival to the TMNT in my heart. I was actually collecting these when I was 12 going on 13... so I was growing long in the tooth for action figures... but damned if I cared! One of these Doctors' blisters was separating from the card back so I shucked him and have since placed him proudly on my shelf! Dr. Killemoff was a high-ranking general in Hordak's army.

Aaaaaand theeeeen... A boxed set of the first four books in the Doc Savage novels set!!! This was one of my favorite items in the bin! I SHOULD have photographed the individual book covers because they are all AMAZING... but I'll feature them sometime in the future. There was also a news paper/magazine thing from the "Invasion" DC event, and a DVD of "Comic Book Villains" which I have never heard of but CANNOT WAIT to watch (Well, I actually can and will wait to watch it because all my spare viewing time is currently devoted to watching horror films for my October Countdown... But come... Novem... Decem... maybe January? I'll be popping this bad boy in right away!!!)

Chris also included this copy of "Star Trek: The Magazine" which features Jeffrey Combs! Chris knows I love me some Combs! Then I saw this "The Art of Star Wars Galaxy" book, which collects the art from the TOPPS trading cards. Oh man I LOOOVE me some Star Wars, and a lot of the artowork from those cards was ridiculously kick-ass.

So of course he included volume 2 as well! Chris proves several times throughout this bin that he's the kind of guy who pays attention to detail. He tailor suited this stuff to me PERFECTLY (which was the point, I know, duh... but it bears pointing out!) case in point being "Sesame Street Unpaved" which is an incredible behind-the-scenes book detailing one of my all-time favorite kids' shows. I've only had the opportunity to kind of flip through these books so far, but I'm planning a Sesame Street blog event for the future, and this book is just PERFECT.

MORE TOXIC CRUSADER ACTION FIGURES!!! This time around we get two of our verdantly virile hero, Toxie! and Dr. Killemoff's Major Domo, Psycho! I left one Toxie on his card and shucked both Psycho and one of the Toxies so they could join Killemoff on the shelf. It felt kind of wrong but it also felt kind of right. I just love playing with toys so much, I couldn't leave them trapped. Now I only have 4 or 5 more of these guys to track down before I have a complete set! But once those action figures were cleared out of the way... the most amazing thing was revealed unto mine eyes:

THIS THING. There have been hints as we've been digging all along. His purple body, his gloved hand... his.. be-spatted foot... all pointing to a California Raisin! But oh what a colossal Raisin it is!!! This thing is a monster! This is obviously one of those huge fair prizes that are almost impossible to win. Weird thing is... I think I remember these kinds of toys hanging from the ceilings of the dart games and whatnot at our own local Blue Hill Fair from when I was a kid! For those of you that don't know, the Raisins were a BIG DEAL for a few years back in the 80's. They were EVERYWHERE. SO it's no wonder that there would be questionably-licensed versions of the characters being given out as fair prizes back then. Good GAWD this thing is beautiful. And ridiculous-big. I have no idea where I will be displaying him, but its been mostly wherever he's least in the way for the time being.

But wait! We're still not done! The bin of awesome has yet deeper... depths... to plume! There was this gorgeous art print/poster of Mumm-Ra, the Ever-Living! The glare on the protective plastic sheath definitely steals some of the impact, but I assure you this thing is awesome.

Also included was this awesome Joker t-shirt! Is it worth anything? I don't know! I yoinked it out of the plastic and started wearing it the next day! I feel like I'm a terrible collector sometimes... but when somebody gives me a Joker shirt I wear that s**t. 

Ugh I didn't realize how blurry this photo came out when I took it... but I DID realize I was too lazy to go tracking these back down to re-photograph them, so you get what you get. "Power Pachyderms!" "Blip!" And two... count them TWO issues of "Sectaurs!!!" Because Sectaurs KICK ASS.

Sooo... now we're getting into the Power Pack neighborhood. I. LOVE. POWER. PACK. These issues here, "Skrulls vs Power Pack," are from a relatively recent mini-series put out around the "Secret Invasion" event back in 2008. I say relatively because the original Power Pack series was put out back in the mid-to-late 80's and early 90's. It had a bit of a renaissance under the "All Ages" series of books Marvel did from 2005 to 2010, in fact this one was the 8th miniseries out of 11. These are not really part of the mainline continuity of the Marvel Universe (like that even matters anymore), but they're still an excellent read. But honestly, they pale in comparison to...

Original Power Pack!!! Chris is actively trying to help me complete my original run of Power Pack. And thanks to this handful of comics (Including #1!!!) I'm finally down to the last 8 issues I need to have them all! This was such an incredibly AWESOME package to have received! Chris Gaida's generosity was ridiculous here, and I really can't thank him enough. I can only say that I owe him MAJORLY and I will do my best in the future to repay the gesture.

Well, that's it for tonight kids! I want to thank Chris Gaida one more time for being such an awesome friend and sending me my Summer of 2015 BIN OF AWESOME!!! Be sure to listen to him and some of my other good old podcasting friends over at Geek Fallout (They are also on iTunes so be sure to subscribe and leave them a review)! You can also follow Chris on Twitter. As per usual, I'll be back very soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies, so until then, Happy Hunting! (Only 19 more days until October Eve!!!)

Funny Books and Comic Books... Sort of.

Hey! Here's some stuff I think I actually bought sometime this year! There's an almost-but-not-quite-theme running through this post... with a couple of significant exceptions that greatly just f--k things up for me trying to write this. 

GEE THANKS A LOT, AWESOME STUFF I FOUND. 

Well here it all is. As you can see, there's some pretty fun stuff in this pile. Let's get started so we can get with the fun... right?

So, based on the stuff I found in this haul, the theme I thought I'd go with was "Funny Books and Comic Books" and for the most part, I succeed. This MAD Power book is one of those rare gems that I love to find: A MAD Magazine comics print collection. These are ALWAYS a sure take-home item for me.

The holy triumvirate of 80's newspaper funnies for me are "Calvin & Hobbes," "The Farside," and "Bloom County" (along with "Outland" and "Opus" which are just continuations of Bloom really). While I am a fun of Garfield, it's mostly his animated adventures that catch my attention. Although many a happy hour were spent as a child poring over my Aunt's VAST Garfield collection, which included EVERY Garfield stri ever collected in book form. 

What was I talking about? 

Oh yeah! Bloom County! This copy of Billy and the Boingers Bootleg still has the plastic record-sheet inside that came with every copy of this book. 

Here. Give it a listen. 

The last book in the pile that without a doubt, unquestionably follows the theme that I am more than a little bit unhealthily obsessed with tonight is this one. Work is Hell by Matt Groening of "The Simpsons" fame. Many do know, but just as many don't know that Groening did a series of funny books back in the 80's starring a bunny named Binky and his zany cohorts, Sheba, Bongo, Ackbar and Jeff. I find these strips fantastically amusing, so any opportunity I have to pick some up for cheap is... a good opportunity that I take right away. Huh. Not sure where I was going with that, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't where it actually ended up. Anyway... I like this book! 

All right... my theme starts to get a bit shaky here. With Choose Your Own Adventure book You Are Invisible we could TECHNICALLY argue that the kids in this young-reader book by Susan Saunders actually have COMIC BOOK superpowers... but I'm not really going to fight that hard to convince you, honestly. These younger-aimed CYOA's are actually a LOT of fun. 

I really love the film based on Everything is Illuminated by Safran Foer, but I've never read the book. Here I also want to point out that I have abandoned my theme entirely. But we'll get back to it. The movie of Illuminated came out in 2005 and starred Elijah Wood. It is wondrous, heartbreaking, ethereal and yet groundedly REAL at the same time. I hope the book is as good. I've been let down in some cases, so I hope this isn't one of those times.

Finally we have this "X-Men: Crisis in the Danger Room" board game, that had me picking my jaw up off the floor when I spotted it! Almost all of the pieces and tokens are present and accounted for, and the construction of the Danger Room play area is intact and fairly easy to construct.

The game includes pawns of Wolverine, Cyclops, Beast, and Gambit. I cry foul that Storm or even Rogue or Psylocke were not also included... but c'est la vie I guess. It would also have been nice to see Cyclops touching his visor, readying himself to fire his optic blasts... but I guess I'm just a stickler that way...

This is one epic build of a board game! The platforms and balance beam still go in nice and snug, and look great put together! I love that we get Professor X there in the control booth, overseeing the proceedings.

There's a couple of towers that are a part of the build too, and I'm including them here just because I can basically. I was SOOO excited to bring this home you guys! This is LOOKs like such a neat game! Maybe when my kids are a little bit older I'll even get to play it!

Well, that is ALL for tonight kids! I'll be back with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies in the near future! Until then, I suggest you enjoy some Happy Hunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 17: A Package From Brian "The Trash Man"

So my friend Brian, "The Trash Man" over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture and I often exchange mail. And it's almost a cheat to include his packages in this countdown because he almost always sends me something that could be construed as Halloween-y. But hey, it's my blog, so I cheat. And besides, there are some pretty overt, directly Halloween-y things in this package to share. 

Like for instance, these two. First up we have an INCREDIBLE McDonald's plate featuring the McDonaldland Gang having a Halloween hoedown! I actually have no idea if its a hoedown or a sock-hop but based on Birdy's and Grimace's costumes, it could go either way. Next, the jack-o-lantern tin on the right which is cool enough in its own right, but once opened was revealed to contain a veritable ARMY of mini-figure toys and other goodies. So lets look at those next. 

Still staying firmly in the theme of Halloween, we have these Monster in My Pocket figures. I had almost ALL of these (well, series 1 anyway) when they came out back in 1990. Nowadays my MiMP collection is getting respectable again, but is a shadowy echo of its former glory.

Next a squad of LEGO-style guys, ranging from LEGO and Mega-Bloks to KRE-O and whatever that little yellow space-guy in the front is from. First we have the INCREDIBLE Man-Bat figure which I LOVE!!! and Havok from mega-bloks. Havok is one of my favorite X-Men. I now own a LEGO Krang-bot from the new TMNT Nicktoon, and Dr. Mindbender from G.I. Joe KRE-O.

Next up are an assortment of toys from various different MUSCLE-related lines. The teal and orange guys are from the original Kinkeshi line that spawned MUSCLE Things here in the states. The Blue and red guys are hard plastic MUSCLE Thing toys, and the guy in the center is from the Ultimate MUSCLE line.

Mini-figures were really like my own personal crack as a kid. I collected the hell out of both of the pictured lines above. Battle Beasts and Army Ants!!! Between all the MUSCLE Things, MiMPs, Garbage Pail Kids Cheap Toys, and the ghosts and sidekicks from the Real Ghostbusters and TMNT lines, plus just other random mini-figures from other lines... I had an army of mini-figures! The Battle Beasts pictured above are "Danger Dog" and "Fleet-Footed Ante-Lope" The Army Ant is is called "Heave-Ho".

Tiny plastic robots, dinosaurs, and firefighters were also included! I placed the two I loved the most in the foreground. The Orange robot and the weird gray "dinosaur" with two ridges running down its back and a snout like the Luck Dragon from the Neverending Story.

More plastic goodies included these "cowboys and indians" figures (I know that's not P.C. but it feels weird calling them Cowboys and Native Americans) and a set of plastic pirates that I believe are probably cake toppers. The pirates have taken up residence on my Pirate/skeletons shelf, even though they are clearly not skeletons.

These two figures are from the Trash Bag Bunch line, which I missed out on, but would definitely like to track more down of nowadays. These guys remind me of Bebop from TMNT and Mutant Zero from the Initiative in a ridiculously vague way. 

Another pair of my near-favorite toys from the whole pack were these two. A Panthro eraser!!! I was (and still am) a huge lover of Thundercats. And Panthro was one of my favorite characters from that show as well as my favorite action figure from that line. The crocodile is from old Super Golden Crisp cereal commercials featuring Sugar Bear. I am also a huge fan of advertising mascots (and their nemeses) so this hungry guy is a perfect addition to my collection.

On the military side of things, The Trash Man included this mega-sized army man and a Cobra Commander action figure! C.C. ended up on my Joes shelf. He's the classic 80's villain and I love both the hooded and helmeted versions of the character.

So Brian and I share an enthusiasm for the Rock Lords. I had most of the toyline when I was a kid, a receiving Granite here made me rush to eBay to see how much it would cost me to fill out the rest of my collection. Turns out... kind of a lot. It's weird to think that a series of toys that had warriors transforming into lumps of rock can go for so much money these days... but if I love 'em, obviously a lot of other people out there probably do too. The fella on the right side there is Taco Terror, one of the Refrigerator Rejects from the Food Fighters line of toys from back in 1988. I've been seeing these things make a huge comeback lately due to nostalgia and the bizarrely awesome concepts and designs of the toys themselves. This was another line that I had a BUNCH of as a kid.

In the category of "items that made me gasp out loud when I removed them from the box" we have this Kermit mug. And not just ANY Kermit the Frog... but his Muppet News Reporter role from Sesame Street. Brian has had some amazing success sending me breakable items via the sometimes-questionable postal service. This is one of my absolute favorite versions of Kermit EVER. As this news reporter Kermit would go out and interview the characters from famous nursery rhymes and fairy tales. It was brilliant. The PEZ dispenser is from 1991 and makes a great addition to my current muppet PEZ collection.

It wouldn't be a package from Brian without some sweet wax-packs (Technically the Beetlejuice cards are not in a wax-pack, I know. Don't worry about it.) and this package did NOT disappoint! I opened the ALF pack to see who the Bouillabaisseball Card featured. The other two remain sealed.

There is probably a very quantifiable laundry-list of items that people have discovered that I love just from reading this blog. Very close to the top of this list is any kind of Choose Your Own Adventure books (or "gaming books" if you're hardcore). And Brian is always hooking me up with these things. The Third Planet From Altair is the 7th book in the CYOA series and Famous and Rich (I'm assuming Robin Leach has the copyright of "Rich and Famous"?) is the 4th book in the "Which Way Books" series. Both look like they will be fun to read.

One of the other most surprising items to come out of this package is this VHS tape featuring the Madballs. I don't talk about Madballs enough on this blog, because frankly I find them next to impossible to find around my area nowadays. Madballs were not the most durable toys when I was a kid, and none of mine survived my childhood whatsoever. I have exactly two Madballs in my vast collection at this point, Slobulus and Crackhead. I would rent the video tape you see above from a local rental place obsessively as a child, as well as its sister-tape Madballs: Gross Jokes. I think they were collectively to be the beginnings of some sort of Saturday morning cartoon that simply never took off.

It was interesting in that it took place in a dystopian world inhabited by ball-shaped organisms (and by interesting I mean "bizarre"). The world was ruled by the evil "Badballs" (all of the second-wave-released characters, led by Wolfbreath who was heart-breakingly one of my favorite Madballs, and VERY hard to watch acting evil) and there was a resistance building to escape the oppressive world led by the good Madballs (all of the first-wave-released characters led by Screamin' Meemie) who just wanted to have fun, which was illegal on their home planet of ORB. Ah the 80's.

If anything sums up a package received in the mail from The Trash Man better than the phrase: "From Trash to Treasure" better... I can't think of one. So the title of the first of three Little Golden Books that Brian included in the package is more than fitting. I am of course a rabid collector of Little Golden Books which is either endearing or creepy depending on who's reading this. In the pile is a book starring one of my favorite Disney Afternoon properties: Chip n' Dale's Rescue Rangers! The Big Cheese Caper. And a Woody the Woodpecker Takes a Trip which stars the main character and his obligatory child-versions of himself that are named Knothead and Splinter.

Also included in the package were some comic book treats! Marvel's STAR imprint was always good for some toy-licensing fun, and here we see Air-Raiders and Silver Hawks representing! Brian of course knows from this blog how much I love my Air-Raiders figure that I salvaged from childhood:

As demonstrated in this picture of Baxter Stockman KILLING him...

I never played with him properly, calling him "Vocal Chord" instead of the much more accurate and unwieldy: Tyrants of the Wind Soldier.

And the comic book includes this KICK-@$$ picture of "Vocal Chord" in all his glory! This sight gave me LITERAL goosebumps.

There's nothing not-awesome about these three issues as well. We have an Inferno tie-in that I actually don't own yet, a Marvel Holiday Special (LOVE the Holiday specials from back in the day!) and a Marvel Super-Heroes Super Heroes Summer Special with the tagline: When Balls Collide!!! That right there is worth the price of admission.

Brian also included this TPB of Rocketo which is a comic I have always been curious about, but too lazy to track down on my own. So now I can finally check it out! It looks amazing.

And when I had heard that he was getting rid of his Shadowpact trades due to the evil, Evil, EVIL minimalist game... I stuck my hand up in the air and said "mememememe!!!" because I liked the team back when they were introduced. These stories are of... mixed quality, and I can see why Brian had decided he no longer needed them in his collection. But I ASKED for them, remember. It was incredibly gracious of him to acquiesce. 

So there you have it kids! The contents of a package from Brian "The Trash Man" Farrell, of Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture fame! That's all I've got for tonight. I'll be back soon with more Gross Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!