I'm Skipping SOOO Much Stuff Just To Show You Guys Harvey the Wonder Clone...

So... this is all from a very recent trip to Goodwill, within the last couple of months I would say... and I'm jumping ahead of a LOT of content in order to feature this post for a VERY special reason. I want to get through the "finds" portion of the post before I get to what I'm so excited about though. 

Here's a pile of loot! Let's check it out!

This is my second time finding a "Sharp Tooth" hand puppet from Pizza Hut. The first one I sent out in a package to a friend of mine as a gift. THIS ONE I KEEP. 2 times is probably my limit on finding Sharp Tooths.. Sharp Teeth... this puppet.

THIS BOOK. I love this book. I added "Shudders" to my Halloween Read Pile (#HalloweenReadPile on my Instagram account) which I began reading back in July. This book was SO much fun! (Ten tales calculated to give you... SHUDDERS!) Whitman classics man! I had a whole pile of these cheap-ass books as a kid I remember a paste-board copy of The Wizard of Oz that I loved poring over because it had all the illustrations of the Hammerheads and the Mice, and a bunch of other stuff that didn't make it into the movie... What was I talking about? Oh yeah! "Shudders" has so many fun old horror stories in it! If you set aside books to get you into the Halloween mood, this is a TOP PRIORITY read people!

This one was a BIG DEAL to me! This is a collection of Berke Breathed comics from his college days, "Academia Waltz," where characters like Steve Dallas and Cutter John from Bloom County were born! These books are ridiculously hard to find, and this is still only the second book. The first one is still missing from my collection.

This giant-sized graphic novel collection of "The Death of Captain Marvel" was such an exciting thing to pull off the shelf at a Goodwill! Still need to just sit down and read this classic tale.

I almost didn't pick up this copy of Chris Van Allsburg's "Jumanji," simply because I was half convinced I must already own it. Once I had disabused myself of this erroneous notion, I picked it up. It's one of those BOOKS, man. One of those books that every family should own.

Probably the MOST exciting find for me on this particular trip full of exciting finds already was this trio of 12-inch scale Star Wars figures in a grab bag with some other junk. The IG-88 is marked 2000 the Tie Fighter Pilot is from 1997, and the Clone Trooper I didn't check the date on because I gave this one to my kids to play with (MUCH more on this clone a little later... BE PATIENT).

Get a little close up. I love these guys!!!

There was a second grab bag as well, and in it were really just a small handful of items that really got me going... a LOT of this stuff went on to become part of a recent giveaway pack I did via my Instagram account. But here were the keepers:

A Garfield Scooter sans Garfield (I'll find him later) a Push-down-to-make-him-go Rex from Toy Story, a Mac Tonight driving a red sports car (yay!) a classic Super Mario Brothers PVC figure, and a space communicator Happy Meal Toy! All fun stuff that no resides here or there all over the Geek Cave!

BUT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THAT CLONE NOW!!!

Hey everybody. I'm Harvey the Wonder Clone.

Meet "Harvey" the Wonder Clone (His name may have been inspired by a particular Hamster from a Weird Al Yankovic song... but also maybe not...). I gave my 6 year old the Clone Trooper I found in the grab bag I featured above. Later on that same day when he was looking for something to do, I offered to let him use the camera. THIS IS A BIG DEAL. He is NEVER allowed to touch the camera. I also gave him an assignment: Take Harvey the Wonder Clone outside and take a bunch of pictures of him exploring the wilderness around our house.

I then promptly forgot the pictures were on the camera... until I started dumping the memory card onto my laptop for blog pictures. And there was ALL OF THIS. I have not edited these pictures in any way, except to add a caption or two throughout. Please check them out. It's pretty obvious in some of them that my son just ind of chucked Harvey on the ground and snapped a pic... but some have such finesse to them that they make me love them.

Harvey laying in a tree.
Just thinkin'.

Love the arms propped behind the long blades here. 

This one is kind of disturbingly like the opener of an episode of CSI or something.

More CSI.

I love this one!

PROBABLY MY FAVORITE PICTURE OF HARVEY THE WONDER CLONE!!!

The juxtaposition of the dead trooper and the bright orange tiger lily is... unintentional I'm guessing.
But striking. 

Kind of funerary.

In the clover...
Just thinkin'.

In the land of the gnomes. 

Tree climbing. The leg position in this one makes it look so lifelike! 

Sunning on a rock.
Just... thinkin'.

That's it for tonight kids! October eve is drawing ever closer! And I have yet to share with you guys this Summer's "Bin of Awesome!!!" (That might just be my next post, we'll see...) I'll be back with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough! So until that time, Happy Hunting!

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!