August Hauls

[andersonh1]

I had a nice find at 2nd and Charles used books today: Batman - The Dailes 1943-1946. From browsing through the intro, this is the entire run of the Batman daily newspaper strip from the 40s. Unlike the flat paper of the Superman dailies, this book is printed on some thick, low-gloss paper that really makes the black and white linework pop. Also unlike Superman's newspaper strip, which ran for something like 25 years, Batman didn't do nearly as well in newspapers.

[Onslaught Six]

RID Cryotek and BW2 Galvatron!

Galvy is a legit Japanese one. This one cost me $25 shipped and is a legit Japanese example--has instructions and the catalogue and all! Weirdly though this one is definitely "used," it almost seems like a kid had it--a careful kid but a kid nontheless. There's some minor paint wear here and there and some paint transfer and scuff marks. I don't mind, of course, it's just a curiosity. As a toy in general though, he's pretty fun and cool and weirdly nostalgic--I never pined for Galvy, more like I assumed I would never get him, so I never looked much at pictures or anything. But he's actually awesome, and has all those classic BW engineering choices, like that classic splitting crotch thing.

Cryotek is a blue TM2 Megatron repaint. He's purdy and cool, and I'm glad to have him, but y'know. I already know this toy. At least he was relatively cheap compared to other examples--one in the box went for $118 fucking dollars the other day!

[JediTricks]

We went to the Ventura County Fair on Friday to see Huey Lewis and the News, and while Huey Lewis took a couple songs before he truly warmed up, it was a good show with a long 1.5 hour set (including 3 songs in the encore) and there wasn't a loser in the batch. He joked about bringing in a couple new songs and had he not said anything it would have been easy to just assume they were B-sides or one of the band's 39 existing singles that we didn't know, they were totally in line with their classic work (which is almost weird, when you think about the lack of growth, but consistency counts for something). The sound mix was fantastic, just the right volume, only drawback was the guitarist was mixed down a little; we had decent seats on the bleachers off to the side with a fair view and no rabble issues.

We also county fair'ed it up for lunch and dinner, splitting between us throughout the night a deep fried grilled cheese sandwich, a jumbo corndog, a huge hand-made garlic pretzel, a deep fried candy bar, and a bbq tri tip sandwich... in that order.

[andersonh1]

I had no regular comic books out today, so I decided to try something different: "Rebels" by Brian Wood. I've had my eye on it for a few months and finally decided to give the first two issues a try. I'll post some thoughts in the comic book thread once I've read them. It's a series about a man in the militia and his wife during the Revolutionary War, so it's quite a change from the usual superhero fare. But I enjoy well-done historical drama, so hopefully this qualifies.

[andersonh1]

Slow month around here, isn't it? Anyway, today's comics: Doctor Who Four Doctors #1, autographed by the artist; Rebels #3, Star Trek: Green Lantern #2 and GL Lost Army #3.

[JediTricks]

Last weekend I covered the D23 Expo in Anaheim. Didn't get much, but did pick up the R4-D23 exclusive droid figure, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens charity pin, and then went into the park and got a souvenir tiki bowl with my Dole whip.

Just before that, I found the Star Wars Rebels Target-exclusive TIE Advanced with figure on clearance for $17.

[Shockwave]

Last month I got a job at Target and I am also getting unemployment, so at least I do have some income and won't lose my house. And I also don't have to sell my collection either. But since I get a discount at Target last week I decided to use it. I picked up CW Ironhide and Mirage and legends scale Skywarp and Rodimus. Ironhide is pretty decent, certainly an improvement over the Universe 2.0 figure and I can't think of a better updated G1-ish Ironhide figure without just going unlicensed. Mirage is also pretty decent, the figure captures the character well enough but I just know that I'm eventually gonna sell this thing for the Henkei one. Rodimus is a repaint of Jackpot and works well enough and skywarp is a mini Skywarp. Not much to say about those. I could have picked up Prowl and Sunstreaker but I just wasn't impressed enough to do so. Especially not when I have better versions at home. So it looks like I'm out for Optimus Maximus.