This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.
I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.
I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.
When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.
The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.
I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.
Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)
Orange for the best colour of fall, for pumpkins and cinnamon and golden leaves. And for the Detroit Tigers. And that's all I am saying about that subject. No jinx.
Today's shirt is just an orange athletic gear shirt simply chosen to allow me to compose whatever I wish on the blog. Note the Huckleberry Hound toy in the shot. See yesterday's blog for details.
Today is a content-light posting. Yesterday frittered away in errands and some work wrap-up (after the usual Friday at 9 .a.m. monster grading deadline).
I bought a new phone: The Samsung Galaxy S4. I was sold on HTC phones, but learning of upheavals in the HTC company AND just impressed overall with the Samsung phone once I read about it and played with it. What the Hell. I was due for an upgrade and my HTC EVO was acting up badly. EPIC FAIL.
More for my benefit than yours (dear reader) but in case you are phone shopping here's two reviews and one article about the imminent release of Android 4.3, due soon to U.S. customers (others in the world already have it).
And in further evidence that the kids' dad and I are very simpatico, I learned that he bought this very same phone recently for more or less the same reasons I did.
Today, the blog features a bunch of art that has been clogging up my in box for some time.
I have finished Night Film, but I am not ready to write that review yet.
Plus today is rather busy. After teaching this morning, I am off to Kalamazoo College to see myself in a film that was made back in like 1983 or something by my friend H. James Gilmore, whom I have not seen since he graduated. Then, I am seeing a movie with Piper, though there may be a bit of shopping first. If all goes well and work is completed in a timely manner, I may have the first day off and day to myself to read comics and get ahead on this blog among other things that I have had in over two months (since before the surgery). I need such a day desperately.
Meanwhile, enjoy scrolling through various works of art, starting with an ancient shot of Academy Street, home of Kalamazoo College.
the art of John Buscema
Buscema's Vision
The next three images are from Francesco Francavilla (featured in T-shirt #206) and his take on Batman circa 1972.
I forget which fan geek site collected these Halloween themed comic book covers, but I like them, so here they are.
Marvel Two in One cover by
George Perez
Mike Mayhew's
take on Jean Grey Phoenix
Classic Buscema splash
as Rick Jones summons
WWII heroes in
Kree-Skrull war
in Avengers
And finally, below, the first two shots with the new phone taken this morning 1310.19. It's the Satchel boo puppy.
I love the Fantastic Four. I love the family dynamic, the strong sense of history despite Marvel's revisions and rebooting, and the top talent that often takes on the comic that came to be known as "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" when Lee and Kirby helmed the flagship title.
The Fantastic Four is a family, and the book is at its best when it remembers that the core concept is family.
It's a bit of a non-traditional family with a man in an "uncle" role living with his best friend and that man's wife and the wife's brother. And though the addition of the first child, Franklin, was traditional (as a product of Sue and Reed's conjugal union), the introduction, later, of Valeria, who would have died if not for the intervention of Doctor Doom: See Valeria Richards Wiki. Again, more subject matter for another day as I plan to devote myself to short assorted nuggets of content since I am here at the beginning of the work week.
The image on the shirt was drawn by John Buscema, who replaced Jack Kirby on the Fantastic Four title, producing issues 107-141 with Sinnott on inks, starting in 1970. Writers Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway.
There is a controversy over who actually invented the Fantastic Four (I side with Kirby), but this is a subject for another time. I have other Fantastic Four shirts.
I have written about the Fantastic Four off and on throughout the blog, such as when I shared a cover gallery and one of my favorite FF covers in T-shirt #168, when I wrote about how Jack Kirby was screwed in T-shirt #83, and when I wrote about the Silver Surfer and shared another of my earliest FF covers in T-shirt #104. Though interestingly, I have not shared my earliest FF cover (#69) as an image yet on this blog. Guess what? Yes, that is also a subject for the next FF shirt. :-)
Today is a collection of random thoughts and pictures. Enjoy.
One of the final Images of John Buscema's FF run from FF#141
TIGERS: When I fell asleep, the Tigers were winning Game Two of the ALCS driven by Scherzer's dominant pitching and homers by Cabrera and Avila with a score of 5-1. This morning I discovered that they lost 6-5 when the bullpen loaded the bases and then gave up a grand slam to Big Papi. The ninth was a team failure all around to allow the winning run (because the Grand Slam simply tied the score). Much like Game Two of the ALDS, the Tigers lose a heart breaker after seeing a dominant pitching performance by the starter.
But that's okay. The Tigers split a set of games in Boston against the team with the best offensive stats of the season and the best record in the American League. The Tigers can still close out this thing in Detroit with three wins in a row, and even if they fail to do that, they have proven their mettle on the road in "win-or-go-home" games. GO TIGERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE WALKING DEAD PREMIERE: I watched this show from 9-10 pm last night while keeping the Tigers radio broadcast alive in my ear and keeping track of plays on my tablet. I love technology.
I was underwhelmed by the season four premiere. Though there were intense sequences and good characterization, the season seems to lack drive and purpose so far.
It is good to have some down time to the story after super intensity, such as we saw at the end of season three. And several of the new challenges to face the survivors were introduced in this episode. Still, it was the least interesting of the last three season openers. Though, granted, it would be difficult to trump the very first episode of the show's first season and the discovery of the prison in the season three premiere.
DUNE: I have decided to re-read Dune, the science fiction classic. I am loving it already and looking forward to the refresher via the audio book edition. At the same time as I am rediscovering Dune, I happend to load a post from John Scalzi's blog, FIND IT HERE, in which he describes the ten books in SF that have meant the most to him. Dune is one of the ten. The first chapter of Dune startling and memorable. The audio edition does it justice.
COLUMBUS DAY
I decided to blow the doors off my students' reality and belief in Christopher Columbus as some great hero and the discoverer of America, neither of which are true. As I recommending books every day to my reading class, obviously, because it's a reading class, I read from Howard Zinn's The People's History of the United States 1492-Present. I told them of the genocide of the Arawak and the pillaging of the Bahamas and Haiti by Columbus and his ilk.
Happy Lies about History Day.
TIDE POOLS
Thinking ahead, I took the Fantastic Four shirt with me to Hawaii and got a picture of myself on some lava at the Kalapana shore in the Puna District. See the spray from the pounding surf behind me?
T-shirt #104 - Silver Surfer, Daredevil, Black Panther - ZAZZLE!
I came upon this T-shirt in an Internet hunt for a shirt featuring the Black Panther, which I found elsewhere.
In my quest, I also found a shirt featuring THREE superheroes at ZAZZLE! (See it at this link!)
Black Panther, Daredevil, and the Silver Surfer all on one T-shirt??
How could I resist?
I could not. So, obviously, this is a newly owned T-shirt, which just arrived in the mail not too long ago (a week or two, such is my time ahead on the blog).
I barely escaped ZAZZLE without going completely superhero shirt buying crazy as the company has produced a whole series of shirts featuring trios of characters, such as ...
I almost bought the one with the Falcon and the Vision, but I was not too crazy about these two heroes being paired with Magneto.
Why the Silver Surfer with Daredevil and the Black Panther? I have no idea.
Also, I cannot identify the artist, but I do like the art. It may be Oliver Coipel.
I invite speculation.
Here, in the photo above, I am posing with my SILVER SURFER OMNIBUS that was a birthday gift years ago from my dear friend Abigail "Crabby" Nappier, who just got engaged to another good friend and a super person, William "BJ" Cherup.
DAREDEVIL & BLACK PANTHER: I plan to feature both of these heroes later in the blog (not today, in the future), so I am going to set them aside as subjects for this entry. Plus, the Silver Surfer is the front image of the shirt. He gets the nod.
FLYING: One of the best things about Silver Surfer is his flying "surf" board. This is such a cool feature of the Silver Surfer that I made a new category called "flying" to track all the heroes with flying as a primary ability or TV shows/movies that in some way feature flying prominently. Flying is very important. It's fantasy related. You do know what the Freudians say about flying dreams, right?
Surfing through the air is another level of cool to the flying fantasy thing. Plus, the surf board makes a great weapon.
As you can see in one of the images, I have a little Silver Surfer toy. I also have a much larger Silver Surfer toy, but it's packed in a box somewhere. If I find it, I may update this blog. Be warned!
NEW T-SHIRTS: I also started a category to track new shirts that have been purchased or given to me as gifts since I started the blog that were specifically meant to be featured on this blog. So far out of 104 shirts, nine of them fall into this category. Two shirts were purchased since the blog began but had been ordered before its beginning and so they did not qualify.
SILVER SURFER: I could write volumes about the Silver Surfer, as he is one of my all-time favorite superheroes. But time constraints both mine (how much time I can devote to writing) and yours (I know people want to see shorter entries) confine me somewhat, though be warned, I may update!
And, yes, I just donated to Wikipedia. If you use it and use it often, I advocate a donation to this non-profit organization.
The Silver Surfer may seem like a silly concept (the name is silly), but the character is very cool. From the pseudo-Shakespearean angst that characterized his early appearances under the watchful eyes of creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in the pages of Fantastic Four to the 1960s solo book written by Lee with art by the great John Buscema (also lauded in T-shirt #21), the Silver Surfer is one of Marvel's most enduring characters and one of its most unique. Jack Kirby deserves the lion's share of the credit for the creation of the Silver Surfer, though some of the most definitive work with the character came about with the Lee and Buscema stories featured in the Omnibus that were originally published between 1968 and 1970.
There was also a great addition to the Silver Surfer lore with the Epic Comics edition by Moebius and Stan Lee published in 1988 and 1989. I have a still from this short series at the end of today's entry.
The Silver Surfer has appeared in many comics over the years and has enjoyed several incarnations of his own solo series, too (sorry for not listing all the great creators who have contributed to his ongoing story).
NEEDS HIS OWN SERIES! Like the Black Panther, also on the shirt, and others heroes soon to be featured on this blog (notably Doctor Strange), the Silver Surfer is very deserving of his own series, which he does not currently enjoy.
Far and away, the Silver Surfer was the best thing about the two Fantastic Four movies, I have video with clips to feature posted here on today's blog entry.
VIDEOS: I am also featuring two other cool videos with today's feature because they do more with the Silver Surfer and his coolness than I can do with words.
Enjoy!
And beware of updates to this entry.
And happy engagement to my friends Beej and Crabby, who soar like the Silver Surfer. I know, I know. Corny.
SuperHeroes - Silver Surfer Intro Video
Birth of the Silver Surfer Video
Thor vs Silver Surfer and Galactus-Full fight Video
AND now for something completely different: EARTH UNAWARE by Orson Scott Card. I just finished reading this book, and though I always post my reviews to Good Reads, I decided to include my blurb review here, too.
Despite his political and religious beliefs, causing him in some ways to be a bigot, I have always liked OSC's work and do find him to be overly pedantic in his fiction, either the fantasy stuff or the SF stuff. I have read all the Ender universe books, and I am excited that he is filling in the early days prior to Ender's Game and telling the story of the first Formic War. It's good stuff, even though he conscripted a co-writer, though I know some people have written him off due to his anti-gay rights bigotry. I get that. And yet, I am too invested in his world building and characters to stop reading now. I know I must accept hypocrisy in some things. This is one of them.
That's all for now. - chris tower - 1307.03 - 14:20
So, the day after explaining my fixation with superhero logos, and how for years I avoided shirts with the likeness of the hero, it seemed fitting to feature another shirt with the likeness of a 1970s Marvel icon. After all, this whole blog started with Marvel's Son of Satan, one of my all time favorite characters from the 1970s, even though recent incarnations have left me altogether unimpressed.
Though I like Conan--today's featured character on today's shirt--I am unlikely to ever wear this shirt out of the house where you can see me wearing it. Okay, sure, I just took my puppy to Camp Fido. And yes, I was wearing the Conan shirt, but it was mostly hidden under another big, warm chamois shirt, so I did not really feel that my Conan shirt was on display.
As I feature new shirts each day, I will make notes of their uses. Some are only worn at home. Some are only worn as pajamas. Some are only worn for sports or exercise. Some are worn when I eat pasta or clean the kitchen because I do not care if they get permanently soiled. Conan falls into the "only at home" category.
In one sense, this category is a bit irrelevant now as I am posting pictures of myself wearing these "only at home" shirts on THE INTERNET, not exactly a private bat-cave by any means. There's nothing really wrong with the shirts with likenesses, especially this one that derives from a comic book cover (Conan #96), and I am more comfortable sporting shirts that look a bit more like something I would have worn when I was 10 or 11 years old than I used to be. But still, I keep this one to "in the house."
Possibly my favorite Buscema
Silver Surfer cover.
I bought this shirt in the last few years, inspired by learning that my wife likes Conan. For a while, she was interested in doing some Conan reading, so I loaded her up with the first three volumes of the Roy Thomas-Barry Windsor Smith Marvels, some of the books with Frazetta covers, and then we watched the movies with Schwarzenegger. Like many discoveries with Liesel, if I was not already in love with her, I would have fallen in love with her upon learning she liked Conan the Barbarian. Who wouldn't?
The Black Coast stories were among
my favorites.
I was not on the bandwagon with Marvel Comics' adaptation of Howard's stories in its Conan the Barbarian title from the start and the earliest issues lavishly illustrated by Barry Windsor Smith. I had not found the Robert E. Howard stories until after I started reading the comics. I jumped on with Conan during John Buscema's run on the comic. I already loved Buscema's art work because of his runs on The Avengers and Silver Surfer. Buscema's strong lines and sturdy figures made a strong impression on me. One of the first short stories I wrote (in fourth grade) was about Conan the Barbarian, inspired by the issues created by Roy Thomas (one of my favorite all time comics writers) and Buscema. The story also was inspired by Treasure Island, which I had read the year before as my first "adult" novel. Later, in the early 1980s, Buscema would do a run on King Conan that not only did I love, but so did my sister.
John Buscema is missed. He died in 2002 at the age of 74. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in the same year. Obviously, I could go on an on about Conan and the character's and the stories' impact on my life, but I have waxed on and waxed off enough for now.
SIDE NOTE: One interesting thing about my Conan shirt is its label. It's not a Hanes or Fruit of the Loom. It's copyrighted by Conan Properties International LLC, and the shirt is manufactured by Mad Engine, who do some very cool shirts seen here: MAD ENGINE.
Art by Barry Windsor Smith
The label reads CONAN in big letters, which seems fitting. He should be in big letters.
- chris tower
just in his house
not in public
1304.11 - 10:06
T-shirt #212: Orange UnderArmor
SAMSUNG GALAXY REVIEW- techradar
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