Due to bandwidth issues, the administrators prefer that users only download a certain amount per day, but if you donate (as all RIGHT THINKING persons of means should) you'll get unlimited downloading...
For those of you not familiar with the open source format of .cbr/.cbz, here's a quick tutorial:
For me, the Golden Age of comics is the most interesting and creative period in comics history. There is a rough, youthful enthusiasm to the art that is miles away from the mannered, diagrammatic art of the Silver Age. (As for mainstream American comics after 1975, the less said about them the better, IMHO...)
IN the beginning, artists like Lou Fine, Will Eisner, and Jack Kirby poured love into each panel they drew. Thinking less of the few dollars per page they were paid and more about the sheer joy of putting their dreams on paper.
Alas, the realities of economic pressures, anti-comics crusader Frederic Wertham & the Comics Code eventually destroyed the glorius wildcat years of comics in the mid-50's and American pop culture has never been the same.
Most people know comic artist Steve Ditko either for his superhero work at Marvel in the '60's (Spiderman, Dr. Strange, etc.) or from his somewhat unhinged but highly entertaining Libertarian polemics (Mr. A, The Question, etc.) but for me the body of his work that most deserves renewed attention (and collecton into book form) are his non-series short stories done for Atlas, Charleton, and Warren from the 50's to the '80's.
An outstanding example of this type of story is the marvelously moody "Fly" from Eerie #7 (Jan. 1967)
, born John Roland Redd in St. Louis, Missouri, was a musician, composer, pianist, organist, and Television pioneer. He was known as "The Godfather Of Exotica". Arriving in Los Angeles, California in 1940, young John Roland Redd donned a turban and performed by the name Juan Rolando. Marrying a stunning Disney Studios artist (Beryl June DeBeeson in 1944), the two enhanced his image, eventually replacing Juan Rolando with Korla Pandit, and composing a romantic history for him as a babe born in New Delhi, India to a Brahman Priest and a French opera singer, who traveled from India via England, finally arriving in the United States. In 1948 Korla was contracted as Music Director to create mood music for radio's latest revival of Chandu The Magician. At an appearance that same year playing for a furrier's fashion show at Tom Brenaman's Restaurant in Hollywood, Korla and Beryl met Television pioneer Klaus Landsberg. Klaus loved Korla's look and offered him his own 15-minute daily Television show - which he named Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music - on the Los Angeles station, KTLA, with the stipulation that Korla would also provide musical accompaniment for another Television show that starred hand puppets. That live show, Time For Beany, was created by Bob Clampett and featured Stan Freberg and Daws Butler as the puppeteers and voices. Landsberg insisted that Korla not speak on his own Adventures In Music show, but rather just gaze dreamily into the camera and play the Hammond organ and Steinway grand piano, often simultaneously. Korla followed Klaus's directorial and contractual stipulations, and became an overnight star and one of early Television's pioneering musical artists. In the 1970's, when his Television popularity waned, Pandit supplemented his income with increased personal appearances at supperclubs, supermarket openings, car agencies, music and department stores, pizza restaurants, lectures, music seminars, private lessons, and the theater organ circuit. He died in Petaluma, California of a myocardial infarction. Two years following his death, it was sensationally revealed in an article by writer/associate editor R.J. Smith of L.A. Magazine that Korla Pandit was actually an African-American who had been born in the United States. Smith won a journalism award for his tabloid-style exposé. Korla Pandit's audio works number over two dozen albums recorded on 78 and 45 rpm records, LP Vinyl albums, and CD labels. His visual works were recorded on early music video type presentations by film pioneer Louis D. Snader of Snader Telescriptions (who eventually replaced Pandit with Liberace, which jump-started the pianist's career).
Here's a comprehinsive website about Korla and other members of his family:
(By a strange synchronistic coincidence, his wife former Disney artis Beryl DeBeeson Pandit was born in Bremerton, WA, the same city, where I sit typing these words!)
IN my humble estimation, 2007 would completely SUCK were I not to ressurect this blog...
Here's what I plan to do:
*NOT post political items (politics is boring and getting LAMER by the millisecond-file under: "WHO CARES ANYMORE?")
*Post scans from my extensive archive of marginal ephemera: books magazines, comics, pulps, fanzines, paper esoterica. etc. I'm a chronic packrat and now I'm living amonsgt the ENTIRITY of psychotic gaterings, so why NOT share?
*Post art by friends, family, and well wishers. There's so much great art out there!
*Post essays on cultural happenings and critical assessments of the passing show of life.
I'm excited. Stay tuned, my scanner should be humming soon...
It remains, then, that I POSTULALE so much as is necessary for my purpose. And let me take as full credit for what I postulate as if I had demonstrated it, good reader, at the expense of your patience and my own. Be not so ungenerous as to let me suffer in your good opinion through my own forbearance and regard for your comfort. No; believe all that I ask of you — viz., that I could resist no longer; believe it liberally and as an act of grace, or else in mere prudence; for if not, then in the next edition of my Opium Confessions, revised and enlarged, I will make you believe and tremble; and a force d’ennuyer, by mere dint of pandiculation I will terrify all readers of mine from ever again questioning any postulate that I shall think fit to make. -de Quincey
