Top Hat Sasquatch

One of my favorite sites in the blogosphere is Cool & Collected, a pop culture site run by Brian Adams. A couple weeks ago, Brian starting posting some excess toys he was wanting to get rid of (something I should probably do) and one of his posts caught my eye. I love action figures as much as the next geek, but something I’ve never really blogged about that I have a major addiction to is PVC figures. When one of Brian’s posts contained a bunch of them, I snatched them up.

I swear guys, I didn’t even know I was collecting these things. I just realized that I have a ton of them from when I was younger, and some of them have been played with more than my old action figures. They were usually made by Applause or Schleich, and based on the figures I have, were sold at Disney theme parks a lot. I have a lot of Mickey, Donald, Figment, and various Disney characters in tiny PVC form.
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Five hundred posts. Wow, that’s kind of cool. Even though I’ve been blogging here in one form or another for six years, the site has only been going consistently for around three or four. Rather than letting the milestone slip by unannounced I thought it would be fun to take a little trip down memory lane and revist some moments from Top Hat Sasquatch/Saturday Morning Central’s history, clip-show style.

In the past few years I’ve met some awesome people through this site (and through shamelessly promoting it on Twitter). Some people ended up joining the cause to blog and podcast with me, and I met plenty of people who run awesome blogs and podcasts of their own. I never would have guessed you could meet so many cool people by running a tiny geek blog.

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Back when I first got into comics in the early ’80s, I was a bit lost when it came to the back stories of my favorite Marvel characters. Well, the collective Spidey Sense of the Marvel honchos must have been tingling as they produced “The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe” as regular installments starting in 1982. In encyclopedic fashion, the issues pieces together the history of various heroes and villains in Marvel history. I collected as many of the issues as I could, poring over the data sheets of every character from Marveldom.

Flash forward 30 years and a handful of various comic artists are breathing new life into the classic OHOTMU. The OHOTMU Reduxe Edition blog is similar to other recreation sites like Covered, Relaunched, and Repaneled where today’s comic artists take classic images and bring their own style to new illustrations based on the source. They’re equal parts tribute and artist showcase.

The OHOTMU Redux effort is led by the great artist Calamity Jon Morris. Morris brought us the Cornered blog for recreations of comic cover name plates. The new site has only been in existence since June 13 and has already featured contributions from over 25 different artists.

My pre-teen eyes didn’t realize it way back when but it’s now easy to see how much of a rush job the original creations were. There were never more than two illustrations of each character, the largest of which was one a plain background. Perhaps that’s why this Redux effort is so appealing. These artists are giving even the most obscure characters considerable attention and care. If the artists can skewer the subjects just a little bit—like in the case of Brodie Brockie’s Doctor Octopus—well, that makes it even more awesome.

Are you headed to the San Diego Comic-Con this year? If so, you’ll want to make sure to stop by Booth 1802 and pay a visit to our friend Alex Deligiannis. Alex has been making amazing sketches every day this year and will be selling mini-prints of a select few. He’s picked 20 of his favorite sketches and has printed them on 5×7 cards. You can pick up your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (in classic red mask or cartoon colors), Spawn, Link, Dick Tracy, X-Men, The Maxx, my personal favorite, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and more.

In addition to the awesome mini-prints, Boom! Studios is selling a SDCC-exclusive variant of Peanuts #1, with a cover colored by Mr. Deligiannis himself. Make sure to check out Alex’s post to see more photos of his prints and find out more info.

It’s been 10 years since the original Spider-Man hit theaters and helped kick off the superhero movie craze. Many older fans are wondering why we need a reboot of the franchise so soon, but for younger fans, this could very well be the first time they’ve seen the web-slinger on the big screen. And if they love the new take on Peter Parker’s adventures, they might want to check out The Amazing Spider-Man AR (Augmented Reality) Storybook for iOS.

The Story

I haven’t seen the movie yet – I’m more of a second weekend of release type of guy – but I have been reading some of the reviews, so I know the general gist of the plot. From what I’ve gathered, the AR storybook covers about the first half of the movie, ending with Peter saving cars full of people from falling over a bridge. There is a hint that something strange and nefarious has caused the cars to go over the side, but we don’t actually see what that thing is. I can only assume it’s the Lizard, but he doesn’t appear anywhere in the book.

On the one hand, this seems like an odd choice. The story seems to stop just as it’s starting to get good, especially for young, action-hungry fans. But on the other hand, maybe the Lizard would be just a little bit too scary for some really young ebook readers. I know that as the father of a 4-year old with a vivid imagination, seeing photos of the Lizard would probably result in a few late-night visits with stories of the bad green man in her dreams. So while I’d be disappointed if I was a seven-year old reading the book, but it’s probably wise for Marvel to err on the side of caution than face the wrath of sleep-deprived parents complaining that their ebook is too scary.
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