Thursday, September 29, 2005

Jack's Back!

I used to have a friend whose job was to lie for a big movie studio. Actually, there are a lot of people in that field but his fibbing was confined to producing movie trailers. When the studio found itself stuck with a movie it thought wouldn't draw an audience, my friend took over. He would design a marketing campaign that would make it look like a very different movie. He sometimes referred to himself as the Executive In Charge of Misleading Advertising.

I thought of him when someone sent me a link to this video. It's...well, you'll figure out what it is. Go take a look.

• Posted at 9:27 PM · LINK

Gone!

A last second war between two bidders got it up to $505,100.00. Not bad but pretty far short of the million dollars Jay kept saying they were hoping it would bring. Ah, well.

• Posted at 5:03 PM · LINK

Going...

Still at $285,100.

• Posted at 4:57 PM · LINK

Going...

I'm monitoring the eBay auction of the Jay Leno signed Harley-Davidson. They were hoping it would go for a million but if it does, there's going to have to some incredible bidding in the next few minutes. It has five minutes to go and it's at $285,100.

• Posted at 4:55 PM · LINK

Last Call

Yesterday, I received the 146th and final issue of Cartoonist PROfiles, a fine magazine that covered comic strips and political cartooning (and occasionally, comic books) for more than 35 years. We noted here in June that its editor-publisher, Jud Hurd, was in failing health and that the magazine would probably be ending. Sure enough, Mr. Hurd passed away on September 14 (as noted here) and now, subscribers have the last issue, which appears to have been assembled mostly by friends and family.

I started collecting Cartoonist PROfiles around issue #30. I spent years hunting for the earlier issues at comic conventions and managed to scrounge up 25 of them. The day I first discovered eBay, my first search was "cartoonist profiles" and when it displayed auctions for the errant five, they became my first (and perhaps happiest) eBay purchase. It really was a fine publication.

• Posted at 4:02 PM · LINK

Muppet Man

Here's a link to a fine article on the late Jerry Juhl, as remembered by Ken Plume. Go read.

• Posted at 1:48 PM · LINK

EC For Me, See?

Recently, I wrote here about the Archie Comics fan club and noted how little it gave you for your dime. That's how I felt at the time...but Jim Newman (producer of this fine show) points out that a good condition Archie fan club kit recently sold on eBay for $40. That's a 40,000% return on your investment if, unlike me, you saved yours and took care of it. Not bad.

A better fan club — and one whose membership kit cost 25 cents but now goes for hundreds in good shape-- was the EC Fan-Addict Club, operated by EC Comics, the publishers of (at the time) Tales from the Crypt, Mad, Weird Science, Crime SuspenStories and others. Your quarter got you a full-color membership certificate, a membership card, an embroidered patch and a very classy-looking membership pin. They also sent out a number of fan club bulletins that were quite interesting. They represent the first time to my knowledge that a comic book publisher presumed that its readers cared enough about the books to want real "news" as to what was coming up and (especially unprecedented) who was writing and drawing it.

EC Publisher Bill Gaines claimed that the kits were deliberately priced so as not to make a profit; that he wanted them to be a goodwill gesture rather than a means of making money off his line's most devoted followers. I think that respect for the reader shows, not only in the kit but in all the EC books. I'm not old enough to have joined but if I had, I'm sure I'd have felt a sense of pride and belonging. I did to some extent in the sixties when I joined the Merry Marvel Marching Society, which I'll write about here this weekend.

• Posted at 1:15 AM · LINK

Bike Sale

Less than 17 hours remain in the eBay auction of the motorcycle stars have been signing on Jay Leno's show and it's only at $125,100. The first time they did this, the chopper went for $360,000 and the second grossed $800,100. Jay keeps saying they're hoping for a million so the bidding's going to have to be hot and heavy between now and 5 PM, Pacific Time for that to happen. It'll probably go a lot higher on its own but if I were NBC and looking to avoid embarrassment to my late night franchise, I'd be arranging for someone to swoop in and bid big if necessary.

• Posted at 12:16 AM · LINK