sketchbook sundays

Tags

1978, art, drawing, Kirby Krackle, pen and ink, robbie robot, sharpie marker, sketchbook sundays, Tomy, toy robot, wind-up toy

Toy Robot
This wind-up toy dutifully marches through a sky filled with Kirby Krackle in tribute to the 1978 toy created by Tomy. For a photo reference, we used a picture taken for our eBay listing which sold this robot a few months ago. This black and white drawing was created with Micron 05 fine point pen, various Sharpie markers, white gel pen, and black pastel. 5×7 aspect ratio, from a high-resolution (300 dpi) scan of original art.

1978 Hot Wheels Spider-Car

Tags

1978, car, die cast metal car, Hot Wheels, Mattel, play, pretend, Spider Car, Spider-man

Although I posted about the Spider-car back in 2011, I took more photos of this awesome little toy to sell it on eBay. Mattel did a great job with these in 1978, and many of them have held up well through the years. You can usually find one for about $20 in excellent condition.

Of the handful of my childhood toys I re-collected in the last few years, the Spider-car stands out in one amazing way. It was the only one that was still as much fun to play with as when I was little! As a kid, I got lost in epic storylines created for my toys. For example, plastic dinosaurs and Star Wars figures could have a war that lasted all day, only to team up when Godzilla showed up on their battlefield. Better call in GI Joe for back-up!

But despite a nostalgia for those immersive days of playing pretend, I just couldn’t get there again with my old toys. They seemed to lack the same magic. Spider-car, however, turned out to be just as much fun to “drive” all over the house, do spectacular aerial stunts, and generally forget for a few minutes the dreadfully serious business of being an adult.

This made us wonder if perhaps all the utterly ridiculous toys scattered around the houses of my child-rearing friends are really there for the kids! How many fathers have bought the latest toy for their sons just so they could play with it too? Most working adults seem to have the means to buy most of the toys they could ever want. But, by the time you can do that, you may have also lost much of the child’s ability to get completely absorbed in play.

While I don’t plan on raising little Martians of my own, the Spider-car did help me reconnect with that playful state of mind. These days, I simply find it takes different kinds of toys and activities to get there. I get caught up in sketching, painting, doodling, and jamming on a guitar for hours where time just melts away. Instead of creating worlds with plastic dinosaurs, I create universes on paper. Now, the Spider-car can’t take credit for all of that directly, but it did serve as a reminder: a reminder that as adults, we have the power to create a safe place for that inner kid that is still with us, and set him free to play at his leisure for a few hours.

Silver Surfer by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (1978)

Tags

1978, book, Fireside, Jack Kirby, paperback, Silver Surfer, Silver Surfer graphic novel, Simon & Schuster, Stan Lee

The 1978 version of the Silver Surfer by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby stands apart from the rest of the characters and history of Marvel Comics. It does not have the obligatory cameo appearance by Spider-man and it does not cross over with the Avengers. In fact, it re-tells the first Silver Surfer story: the Surfer rebels against Galactus so that Galactus will spare Earth. But here, we have no Fantastic Four, no Watcher, nothing from the first time Lee & Kirby spun this yarn. Instead we have a love story, featuring a previously unseen female counterpart for the Surfer.

If we may be honest, we did not care for the story. The love story felt contrived for maximum pathos without really mattering at all, and the additional “average person” characters trotted on stage seemed generic or maybe just bland. Reading a different version about a Surfer scenario we already knew backwards and forwards felt almost like a waste of time.

So why did this come out? If we had to guess, Marvel hoped to pick up a more adult audience for the comic book. Notice that Fireside, apparently a Simon & Schuster company, published this “ultimate cosmic experience” – not Marvel. This book seems aimed at a general audience, not your die-hard Marvelite. Stan and Jack stripped off all the superhero from the original Surfer tale, turning it into a science-fiction movie that adults could get into, but also share with their kids. As such, we can appreciate this book as an example of early efforts Marvel made to penetrate mainstream culture by expanding into more media, and adapting their intellectual property to the new media. And just look at them now.

Anyway, regular visitors to Mars Will Send No More will understand we bought this book for exactly one reason: the stunning jack Kirby artwork. So why don’t we have a look inside and blow our minds together?!

We would pitch you this book from our eBay sales page, but we already sold it to a lucky reader in Switzerland. Global Shipping Program spreads the love internationally! But have hope: you can often find Simon & Schuster’s original Silver Surfer printings from 1978 in stock in both paperback and hardcover.

Incredible Hulk Pocket Book 1978

Tags

1978, collection, Herb Trimpe, Hulk, Incredible Hulk, Incredible Hulk Pocket Book, Jack Kirby, paperback, Pocket Book, Pocket Books, reprint, Stan Lee

This handy paperback has most recently proven useful in settling questions about Hulk history. Often these stories get forgotten in the vast expanses of Hulk lore, his origin story retold so many times that any two people probably have a different version in their heads. Here, Hulk remains more a man than a monster – a sullen and irritable man with a limited vocabulary, but far from the dim-witted “Hulk Smash” of the 1970s. In these stories, Banner hulks out at night, not simply from rage.

Stan Lee provides a brief but entertaining introduction as he did with all the Pocket Books we’ve seen from the 1970s. These books were great fun to own then, and we read these stories until we had them memorized. Ditko’s artwork – featured in one story here and in the similar Spider-man paperback – and Kirby’s artwork entertained us to no end.

These days, they seem a bit dated. Hulk is always fighting Commies, the art is far more simplistic than Kirby’s later style, and the plots seem kind of goofy. Stan and Jack probably hit the nail right on the head for their audience: boys and young men who enjoy action stories full of conflict and gadgets, at a particular time in history. Today they are curious beasts, an odd lot from a simpler time of comics where pulp horror and science fiction met in the mainstream to create superheroes.

Stan and Jack had no idea how big this thing would blow up, and readers 50 years later would seek out these stories for reference and entertainment. The charm in these first six Hulk tales lies in that very lack of self-consciousness, innocently dashed out in a few days or weeks. Just look at the utter disregard for backgrounds and ornamentation on these pages: direct, economical, focused entirely on figures and dialogue.

This little volume from Pocket Books in 1978 held up remarkably well. Even as a mass market paperback it enjoys very solid production: durable pages with clear art and color, a firm binding more than 35 years later, and a tight, glossy cover. We have this copy of the Incredible Hulk Pocket Book for sale on eBay, if you would like to be the next fan to take a turn unearthing this Marvel Comics time capsule.

It even comes with a bonus two-page spread of “Hulk’s life in a single image” by Herb Trimpe. Trimpe, of course, had put his unmistakable stamp on the Hulk by the time this reprint book arrived in 1978, visually defining the Hulk for a generation of fans.

Mattel Hot Wheels Spider-Car

Tags

1978, Hot Wheels, Hulk Van, Matchbox 57c Wildlife truck, Mattel, Spider Car, Spider-man

In 1978, Hot Wheels, a division of Mattel, produced the Spider-Car. You may not remember seeing this car in any comic books, and it certainly hasn’t made the big screen adaptations yet either. After what they did with CGI for the Bat-mobile, you’d think they could whip up a Spider-Car beyond our wildest imaginations. Imagine Venom behind the wheel of Spider-man’s car, causing mayhem and manslaughter. Maybe in a team-up Nightcrawler could teleport the crankshaft into space…

You can still find the Spider-Car on eBay for about $20 delivered, so happy hunting. Don’t forget the Incredible Hulk Van, pictured below. If I recall correctly, it featured doors on the back that opened up. I also had a safari truck with a lion in the back. The lion would pace in a circle when I moved the wheels. Since the lion easily detached from his own truck, he sometimes went for rides in the Hulk van.

For collectors, this lion truck is Matchbox 57c Wildlife truck. It came in ugly yellow but I prefer the zebra stripe model. I’ve seen that zebra stripe model referred to as Matchbox 57e, but I’m no diecast car expert!

Before I lose you with my nostalgic ramblings, rock out on these pics of the Spider-Car. I totally stole them from the guy who sold me the car but don’t think he’ll mind.