Miraclo Miles

Forty three years ago - September 6, 1978 - a (nominal) Dr. Strange movie aired on CBS, intended to be a pilot for a series. Starring Peter Hooten as the titular doc, in this version a psychiatrist who becomes the successor to the Sorcerer Supreme, up against an Arthurian threat: Morgan le Fay.  The rewriting of the story was more than I wanted to accept, then or now. Most prominently, Strange's whole moral character arc was removed from this version - the greedy, egocentric surgeon who had to lose his skill as a result of a nerve-damaging accident, sending him on a quest that would utterly transform him. That biased me against it even more than their choice to go the Arthurian route with the menace, and making Clea just some random person who was mind-controlled as part of the villain's scheme. Morgan was played by Jessica Walter, which is probably one of the few components about this that's aged well both as a person and a career. (Doesn't she look th...

      First, the way the two Marvel Omnibus shelves currently look, including the two additions below. Still acting as partial placeholders are a few of the old Marvel Masterworks, bought from the first year of their release many years ago, waiting for the eventual Omnibus editions to come my way. A leap from the April 19th previous look , when it was maybe one and one third shelves. Fifteen volumes then, twenty five now.       The Defenders and the second of the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four editions have that poorly-decided, tiny spine lettering, which is unfortunate. I can only guess that someone thought it made them look... I don't know, more dignified? A minor issue in the sweep of things, but still, not a choice I'd have made.       So many others pre-ordered, waiting (mostly) for their release dates which now stretch into March 2022, but here are the two most recently-arrived ones:         ...

      Over sixty years down, I'm trying to get it right. Disassembling, examining the pieces, and trying to put them back together in an improved way.       Procrastination and related depression remain strong players.        I still spend far too much of my conscious time in one of two, equally useless states:       1) I have all the time in the world, and I just need to rest and de-stress a little before I roll up my sleeves and get what needs doing done.  and...       2) Not anything close to the time on hand to do what must be done. I'm fucking doomed. Everything's as good as ashes.       Both states are paralyzing, differing only in degree of stress.       Neither state is something I can continue to afford.       Still, I have managed improvements in the past decade.       I tackled a situation of d...

    (Note: This post may simply be an exercise in imaginary indulgence, where I eventually mine most of the pleasure of potentially owning something simply by thinking about it. Think of it as a variation on how some manage to finally shed themselves of excess possessions by taking a picture of it, allowing them to keep it on some level while selling it off or giving it away. Certainly, there are much better uses for over $400. On the other hand, if I should make the decision to buy it, I'm not going to hand-wring over it. At once or, more often, in tiny outlays, I've bought far worse/less for far more money over the years, and all of that was when $400 was a considerably larger portion of my income.)        I turned 60 this year.       While I know there are exceptions to any such things, I think that as a general rule I'm part of the generation just before when an adult having and displaying action figures was as open an option. Peo...

Happy Birthday, Al Lewis!   This would have been his 98th... we think. Al - born Abraham Meister - was in the habit of telling tales.       His Wikipedia page gives a fair rundown of this life .

      Now spilling onto a second shelf, there had been enough changes since my March 21st post to warrant an update.       The two latest additions have been within the past week.      The first volume of the Avengers series was given to me just today, by friend of many, many years, Pat M. It collects the first 30 issues of the series which launched in 1963. This version has an hommage of the first issue's cover, by John Romita jr and Klaus Janson.        The origin of the team, the first big roster shake-up, and the first appearances of some of their major foes, particularly the time traveling Kang, and their opposite number team, the (difficult to say with a straight face as an adult) Masters of Evil. As with so much on these shelves, I'm looking forward to going back over them at leisure, trying to get the best of both the nostalgia and of seeing the work with fresh eyes.        In rec...

   This is the fifteenth anniversary of a dark, extremely local event . Oddly, it seems even longer ago that fifteen years. A lifetime's difference, though.

       In the end, you did the things you've done.       So simple a statement as to be asinine, but it's true, and it's important to realize it, not just dismiss it as a simple-minded given.       As far back as I can recall I've been a procrastinator.        It's so much a reflex that I don't know that I can reliably tease out the proportions of active components. How much is simple laziness? Oh, not now! I'm tired! How much is the desire for instant perfection, and the simultaneous knowledge that it won't be there? It's going to look like shit! I'll end up having to tear those pages out! How much is fear of some element of the task? What looks like a simple problem now could turn out to be so much worse! If I start digging there or tugging on that, I could have a huge mess! It may not even be something I can fix, or it could be something that's just a problem now, but if I let it be it'll sort itself o...

      While for the most part I'm comfortable with transitioning to a digital collection for comics -- having sold off my collection of side-stapled comics years ago -- between gifts and bargain-hunting 2020 into 2021 has seen me slowly building a collection of Marvel Omnibus editions.        These collect long runs of series, with associated tie-ins, along with letters pages, as, depending on the era, they often contained fuller explanations of events in earlier issues as part of the back-and-forth with letter-writing fans. My preference would have been for them to include the Bullpen Bulletins pages, too, as they also contained a great deal of history. But, they made the format decision they did, so they are what they are.        Will this turn out to be an impulse I'll regret? Hopefully not.        While I hope to get to them sooner, I like to think that I'll be able to spend as much time as I want with t...

              The concept for this sub-theme for this sub-series for the blog - my Musical Mulligans - is outlined here.              One of the best-selling albums of all time, Carole King's Tapestry was released on February 10, 1971. Her second studio album, it remains an amazing accomplishment. Recorded the previous month, the album was released the day after her 29th birthday -- instant musical immortality.        She wrote or co-wrote all of the songs on the album, two of the songs had already become hits performed by other artists: Aretha Franklin had had great success with " (You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman ", and way back in 1960 The Shirelles had recorded a version of " Will You Love Me Tomorrow? "       Having heard King perform, it threw me that she had gone so long content to simply write and compose songs that others would use to build their ...

      Pal Laney Loftin brought these up in a facebook post just over two years ago, which gradually thawed and shifted a small block of memory.        Checking into it, I was right when I estimated that these would have come out in '66 - both from the characters and art, and that being when Marvel was getting a little mainstream media traction with those limited animation cartoons, the artwork lifted directly from comics.        These looked very familiar, but at the same time I don't recall getting any of them. As best I can piece together from the dates, selection, and (uncorroborated) memory, I probably only saw these at the decades-gone Kay's 5 &10 on Woerner Ave. back in Levittown, PA in '67 -- possibly even '68, depending on how long they sat on their wooden shelves. I was likely only seeing them at the end of their run in the store. I vaguely recall the display and the envelopes, both of which had been maule...

        The concept for this sub-theme for this sub-series for the blog - my Musical Mulligans - is outlined here. That will pop out into its own window, so it won't close this one. I want the chance reader to know what I have in mind without having several paragraphs of boilerplate starting each one of these off.       I wrote the following while listening to the album, making use of my Amazon Music subscription. (It was a 2002 remastered version.) If you have access to the album I'd suggest you play that while reading, or at least listen to it fairly close to when you read it. I'm not necessarily going to go track by track in any detail, but I will be trying to give attention to the complete album. In aiming to best appreciate it for what it originally was, I'll be trying to experience it with the original, physical separations that were part of the format. Maintaining a sense of album sides, from back when we had to get up, carefully lift...

      A series of posts are planned, the first of them tomorrow (11 January, 2021). These will be, especially at the beginning, well spread out. Based on a slightly-expanded version of the initial list, I currently only have that one planned for January, two for February, four for March, three for April, etc. If I can manage the ones I have outlined that'll be enough of an accomplishment.        Rather than clutter up that and each piece with this outline/preamble, I thought I'd make a separate post of it then let it be a pop-up link I'd start each piece off with, for those who wanted the backstory.    Blog sub-theme concept:       An early 2021 meme image - really more of a milestone/memorial piece - listed albums that would turn 50 this year.        1971 was the year I turned 10, and I casually soaked in the ambient sounds coming out of mostly radio speakers at the time. Music was largely unr...