THRIFT STORE FINDS 2-8-2011

A couple months ago I was at the thrift store and came across an old shoebox. It was full of small catalogs, mini-comics, and game manuals from the early 1980s. I like finding things like this because it is like opening a time capsule from my childhood years.
After getting it home and taking a closer look, I found that about 50% of the box was filled with old ATARI manuals and catalogs. Some were from games I grew up playing and others were one I'd never heard of before.
My 13 year old son got a thing this last Christmas that has a whole bunch of ATARI games on it from his grandma. It was fun playing those together and watching my kids make fun of the poor graphics. I tried to explain to them that as a kid video games were a lot different. Even when the Nintendo first came out it was not the kind of thing a kid would just get as a Christmas gift for themselves (unless maybe they were an only-child?) it was a gift for the whole family to share. When I think back to the ATARI even more so. I can remember the whole family playing Pong and Frogger all sitting around together taking turns. It was a lot different back then I think.

Anyway, let's take a look at the manuals. It's a shame I can't scan the insides. It's already going to have to be a two-part post.


AIR-SEA BATTLE (1987)


ASTEROIDS (1979) <---I'm highlighting in green the games I remember playing!!
BASKETBALL (1978)



It looks like the basketball players have a penis? What is that supposed to be?


BERZERK (1980)


BERZERK


BOWLING (1978)


BREAKOUT (1978)

This game and a lot of others have a small cameo in an excellent short film "PIXEL". Check it out.




CHOPPER COMMAND (1982)


E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)

The rushed production of this game (six weeks) to meet the 1982 Christmas holiday season resulted in one of the worst video games ever made, and according to the Wikipedia, "one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history."
E.T. is frequently cited as a contributing factor to Atari's massive financial losses during 1983 and 1984. As a result of overproduction and returns, unsold cartridges were also buried in a New Mexico landfill.
Due to high anticipation and unexpected competition between 2.5 and 3.5 million cartridges went unsold. (see more at Wikipedia)


GALAXIAN 1983


GHOSTBUSTERS 1984




JR. PAC-MAN 1986


KANGAROO 1983


KRULL 1986

I watched about half of this on late night T.V. a few months ago.




KUNG-FU MASTER 1987


MATH GRAN PRIX 1987


MILLIPEDE 1984

You can play this game online at

http://www.atari.com/play/atari/millipede

MISSLE COMMAND 1981


MOONPATROL 1983


MS. PAC-MAN 1982


OTHELLO 1981


PAC-MAN 1981


PITFALL 1982

Here's the commercial for pitfall featuring 13 year old Jack Black.




POLE POSITION 1982


Q*BERT 1983


SPIDERMAN 1983


STREET RACER 1978


SUBMARINE COMMANDER 1982

Is it just my artist's imagination, or does this island from Submarine Commander look like a dead rabbit?



a little photoshop...




VOLLEYBALL 1982


WARLORDS 1981


YARS' REVENGE 1982

Along with the manuals were an assortment of Atari game catalogs featuring listings of available games of the time and some ATARI FORCE mini comics that were included with the games.


1983


1981


1981





ATARI FORCE was the name of two comic book series published by DC Comics from 1982-1986.

Along with the manuals, catalogs, and Atari stuff there were also 63 other 80's mini-comics in the shoebox. If anyone can comment a guess on what they are, I've got duplicates and I'll mail them to you???? I'll post the answer and pics in a week.

BUNK'S JUNK 2-5-11

I came home to a pleasant surprise a few days ago. I received an envelope full of stuff from my favorite artist Tom Bunk!! He found one of my envelopes in his studio and was nice enough to mail me some recent sketches for things he has been working on.

He sent two really neat cards (one he made for New Years) I know the scans don't do them justice.





He sent the sketches for his illustration in Mad #507 (Feb 2011)











There were actually 5 different stages the last one being my favorite. I really wish sometimes that Mad would do a better job of printing some of these a bit larger. There are so many excellent details readers might miss out on. Getting the sketches from Tom, I kind of feel spoiled to get a deeper look.

He also sent a couple sketches from one of his gorgeous pin-up girls. The rest of these beauties can be found on his blog

http://bunkart.blogspot.com/2010/08/bunks-pin-up-gallerycreated-out-of-pure.html

He also sent his preliminary work for his new Mad spoof of Donald Trump's "Undercover Boss" from the latest issue of Mad (#508 April 2011) which should be in stores now.

( These images have been removed temporarily. When I got my issue with my subscription I was unaware that it had not reached the shelves quite yet. Sorry Mad, and sorry Tom. Won't happen again!)

Thanks again Tom and keep up the great work!

NEAT FINDS FROM HOARDER'S STASH

I was on my way into work last Saturday to make up some hours and I noticed a sign near the curb. It said "1000's of books/Artwork" with an arrow pointing into the parking lot.
First of all I thought it was odd that there would be a garage sale in the dead of winter, and secondly there really isn't anything behind the parking lot at my job besides a couple small dilapidated houses and a dead end.
I followed anyway and parked to look around. I knocked on the back door of one of the houses and a lady told me to come inside. She said that her father who was an art professor at the college had passed away and that she and her siblings were trying to clear out his houses.
I found out that he had owned both of the two run-down houses that sit behind the building I work in. I always wondered if anyone even lived in them and my wife and I had commented on them quite a few times in the past when she would drop me off at work and use the dead end to turn the car around.
The woman was there with her brothers and sisters who looked like they were in their 40's and there were other people from town walking through the house looking around.
The woman explained that the house was a bit overwhelming but I was free to wander through the rooms and look at anything I wanted. Her father was a hoarder and they had no idea what to do with all his stuff. They hadn't even begun to go through the house next door which was also filled with his stuff.
I started looking around. There was several rooms all lined with bookshelves to the ceiling filled with thousands and thousands of books! There was artwork leaned against the walls two feet deep of all different kinds. I must have spent three hours skimming through the shelves room by room. The majority of the books dealt with art, an entire wall of Japanese art books, a wall of Mexican art books, another huge shelf of books on surrealist books. Everything was very well organized.
There were lots of cookbooks, religious books, craft books... old books spanning the the entire century.
After scouring half-a-dozen rooms I had to take a break because I was getting dizzy.
One of the man's sons told me they already filled three industrial-sized dumpsters with stuff to haul away and they were on their fourth.
Earlier on that day a guy had stopped by and bought the entire load of Jazz/Blues records the guy had amassed over the years. He must have made out like a BANDIT!
The children were selling the stuff by the box-full for practically nothing. I got a big box of books for $3. I finally had to stop to get in my hours at work but the children said they would open the place up again and had to get everything out by the 31st.

I thought I'd share a few of my favorite finds. I'm hoping to get in there again this weekend and maybe get a peek into the second house. If there are any books my blog readers want me to keep an eye out for post a comment please and I'll do my best. I'm really good at grabbing things I know my friends are looking for.



I found this 1st edition copy of The Yum Yum Book by cartoonist R. Crumb which he originally made for his girlfriend back in the late 60's.



I got this copy of Little Black Sambo which I've only ever found once before with the cover ripped off.



I got this demonic looking book on the occult.



I found this neat Charles Addams book called Nightcrawlers which is excellent. I never really read any of his old cartoons and his dark humor made me laugh so hard I almost crapped my self.
Here's a couple I scanned:





I got a whole stack of books with old stag party cartoons and a bunch of old children's books I've been looking for. I also got a bunch of Mad and humor related paperbacks and of course so drawing books. I found some great old comics and am hoping there will be more when they open up the attic/basement or the house next door. The day after I went through the first house I went back and no one was there so I peeked in the window of the other house and could see it was full of large bookshelves also.

The fourth dumpster was full and covered with snow but I did dig down enough to find a couple boxes full of old art supplies and a few cigar boxes full of old rubber stamps which are really cool. I used a bunch of them the next day at work for some neat designs. Here is a couple pics of that.





Since I work next door, I'm going to keep a lookout this weekend for when they open it up again and I will post any updates.

WHAT MR. POTTER IS READING 1/21/11

"Hey kids, let's take a look at what Mr. Potter is reading!"


True Experiences With Ghosts, edited by Martin Ebon (1968)


The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, by Fred Rogers (2003)


The Ultimate Elsewhere, by J.H. Brennan (1975)


Freak Brothers #6, by Gilbert Shelton (1980)

MAD MAGAZINE ENVELOPE OF THE MONTH ADVENTURES

Ever since I can remember, Mad magazine has had an "envelope of the month". Readers can submit a letter with an illustration on it and hope to get it published in the letters page. Often times Mad gives away great prizes or free subscriptions to readers who mail in letters. Just the honor of having your letter published in Mad is enough for me.

I often thought about submitting a letter in the hopes of it getting published. I was just to lazy to do it I guess.

In early 2005 I decided to give it a shot. I drew up an envelope with a gag with Alfred E. Neuman as a toy called "Barrel of Neumans" instead the classic "Barrel of Monkeys".
I mailed it off and a couple months later I was at the grocery store and saw the newest issue on the shelves. I paged through it and was thrilled to see that my envelope was printed in the letters page! Thrilled is kind of an understatement. I don't think I stopped smiling for hours, I even showed the check-out girl at the register. I bought two copies of that issue (#453 May 2005) along with the one I got with my subscription.







Tomorrow I will once again mail a letter to Mad in the hopes that it will be printed in my favorite magazine. Since this month marks the 50th anniversary of the Mad strip Spy Vs Spy, I decided to use them as the subject for my envelope art. I dug through a pile of old Spy Vs Spy paperbacks from my collection and found an image on the back cover of one that I thought was perfect and used it for my reference.



Here are a couple scans of my envelope:





So hopefully we will see this in the pages of Mad in the future?

I want to go back to that issue where they printed my envelope so I can tell you a dumb story.

You may have noticed that goofy looking guy's photo above my envelope. His name is Jim Hutchings from Ontario, Canada and he mailed in his photo hoping to have it drawn into a Mad fold-in by artist Al Jaffee. Mad has a "Make a Dumb Wish Foundation" and that was Jim's dumb wish. Jim has mailed Mad dozens of envelopes of the month in the past and is a great artist. He's had many published in past issues.



The editor said after consulting Jaffee he would not be able to grant Jim's request because, "after what happened last time, he would never draw another Canadian!" The editor then went on to make fun of Jim's strange photo.
Further down the page the editor had commented that Al Jaffee may decide to draw me in one of his fold-ins because I hail for the good ol' U.S. of A.!

It wasn't until after that issue that I went back into earlier issues in my collection and found handful of Jim Hutching's previous envelope submissions. Here are a few scans:


June 1998


November 2000


November 2003


July 2004

So being the odd guy that I am, I actually struck up a friendship with the Canadian artist Jim Hutchings and we became friends on Myspace and chatted from time to time. We were both huge Mad Magazine fans and cartoonists and had much to talk about.

In November of 2005 Jim messaged me to tell me about an envelope he had tried to mail but had dropped on the way walking to the post office. He had lost it in the snow but had luckily photographed it beforehand and was still retracing his steps in the hopes of finding the original.

The next year in March, Mad published Jim's sad story along with the photograph he sent them. They also created a simulated photo of how his lost envelope may appear after being submitted to the Canadian elements after all this time (typical Mad humor).


March 2006

Two Months later a guy named Scott Borger from Ohio sends a letter to Mad claiming that he's found Jim Hutching's lost envelope and is holding it ransom. As evidence, he enclosed a photo of the aforementioned envelope which is in reality an arrangement of objects and poorly re-illustrated garbage meant to be passed of as the unrecovered original.



Now as if the story has not gone far enough, Jim messaged me on Myspace shorty after to let me know that Matt Handfield from Holyoke, Ma had submitted an envelope challenging him to a envelope of the month battle and along with his submission had sent the editors a drawing of him burning Jim's photo from the same issue I had my envelope posted over a year earlier.


June 2006

Of course, Mad who looking back was probably excited to have inadvertently sparked up submissions was happy to print the whole ordeal.

It wasn't until November of 2006 that Jim's response appeared in the letters page. He had depicted a boxing match between himself and Handfield and a challenge for an art competition.
(I should have jumped in the ring at this point and whooped both of their butts, but oh well...)


November 2006

Between November 2006 and Jan 2008 Jim Hutchings and another letters page contributor named Dan Root got into it and continued to battle. I don't have scans of Dan Roots letters but here is the Star Trek themed response from Jim from August 2007.



Eventually in early 2008 Matt Handfield mailed in his final insult in "The Envelope Strikes Back" which was a intensely illustrated depiction of Jim Hutchings frozen in carbonite surrounded by Star Wars characters and being congratulated by Darth Vader.


January 2008

There has never been another challenge heard from any of the three artists since, but in June 2009 Jim Hutchings did mail one final envelope to Mad celebrating their 500th issue.



I haven't rekindled my friendship with Jim since abandoning Myspace and have yet to reacquaint on Facebook. We will see if my latest Envelope will make it into the pages of Mad, and if you get an opportunity to check the newsstands you may find out before I do.