‪Spider-Man model sheets for the 1994 animated TV series.

talesfromweirdland 

‪Spider-Man model sheets for the 1994 animated TV series. (And two extra for Venom.)

Notes from my attic #4

I was a huge fan of the Hulk. This was mainly because of the TV series, The Incredible Hulk, which ran from 1978 to 1982. I was old enough to be able to understand what was going on, and young enough to still be impressed by a spray-painted bodybuilder wearing a Beatle wig. I used to imitate that typical slow-motion run he always did, upturning all furniture in my way, and to his dying day, my grandfather called me “Hulk”. I must have been a very entertaining kid.

The local ice cream vendor sold ‘Hulk ice’. This dubious, possibly unlicensed product consisted of two colors: not green and purple, as you’d expect, but green and white. It had such a bizarre, unreal taste that, even now, I’m still able to read in the dark without the need of a light. But the association with the Hulk made it cool, so I had to have it each time we passed the vendor. And I mean cool as in dandy.

Then there were the toys. I fondly remember a Corgi Hulk car, which was part of a slightly bigger line:

Apart from the Hulk terrain car, also in my possession were the Spiderbuggy, as it was called, and the Batmobile, which came with Batman and Robin figurines and little plastic missiles. I loved such little details, like the Spidey decal on the bonnet/hood, or the Batmobile’s front razor and plastic exhaust flame.

The “Supervan”, however, could not claim such love from me. It was quickly relegated to my private Hall Of Sorry Toys, where it joined, among other misfires, the Strawberry Shortcake figurine of the Purple Pie Man; the talking toy robot that could only utter German phrases and then swiftly died on me; and a Bespin Security Guard. The Supervan was quietly atrocious. Why would Superman need to drive a van anyway? Spider-Man in a jeep, that was pushing it, but maybe he was stuck in a desert and there weren’t any high buildings around to swing from. Superman in a van, however, that is just a disheartening sight. As if DC’s “Muhammed Ali vs Superman” fight hadn’t been terrible enough.

Superman reminds me of ice. Why, I do not know. Perhaps because of all those crystal cave shots in the 1978 movie? I owned a Superman Atari 2600 game, and the mere mention of it makes me think of thin, watery ice lollies. Possibly strawberry-flavored. Welcome to my world.

The Superman movie was pretty great, and I was sort of a fan. I saw it the other day though and it bored me a bit frankly; I found myself checking my phone way too often, like some guy whose wife’s expecting. Yet it’s lightyears better than Spider-Man’s live action outing of that period. If you’ve ever accidentally been exposed to Spider-Man Strikes Back, you’ll know what I mean. It’s a clueless guy running around on rooftops. It reminds me of those hideous YouTube videos of Spider-Man, Elsa, The Joker, and so forth. What’s up with those videos anyway?

To my eternal regret, I lost that Corgi Hulk figurine. I lost the car too. I lost Spider-Man, the jeep and the green troll–probably buried them at a beach somewhere, because I was raised by wild dogs and always buried my toys when I had the chance. I lost Batman, Robin, and the Batmobile. But I still have that Supervan. In collector’s terms, I guess it would be described as being in “near-mint condition”. Simply because I hated it, it’s worth money now. Hate with an interest rate. There you go.

I’m supposed to add a video from my YouTube channel Tales from Weirdland in every post, so I guess I’m going with Escape from the Planet of the Robot Zombies, which is a nod to old Atari 2600 games. In a later entry, I’ll provide background information on that video.

Notes from my attic #3

Smurfs figurines. I come across these damned things everywhere in my attic. The whole floor consists of Smurfs figurines. I had so many of them. Even now, after all these years, sometimes when I sneeze a Smurf comes out.

I used to believe that the Smurf on the left, the golden one, was worth a lot of money. It wasn’t.

These comics hadn’t seen a human face for nearly three decades when I upturned the box this afternoon. The instant I saw these covers again, I remembered them like yesterday (there, the first cliché is in the can). They look remarkably well, considering they’ve been taken to the beach, the swimming pool, to the coal cellar whenever I was locked up there by my parents for having “girly manners”, to family, and to everywhere really. I always took my stuff along with me like a hobo. Let’s pick one comic and see what we have, shall we.

It’s a Prince/Michael Jackson hybrid on a motorcycle, called “Ace”. This was the time of street gangs, graffiti, flashing blades, ghetto blasters. And it’s everywhere in these old Marvel comics, isn’t it. You can’t cross a street without running into some young thug with a headband and a knife.

This street fetish is one of the forgotten themes of the early 80s. The streets, back then, meant danger. It was evident in music videos (Billie Jean, Beat It), films, TV shows, comics, computer games… I developed severe Agoraphobia because of this. But I guess it reflected the times. This was when Times Square (NYC) was a sleazy place with cheap cinemas, crack dealers, prostitution, high crime. And it wasn’t just New York, it was like that in all the big Western cities (Amsterdam, where I live, London, Paris, et cetera). Then in the 90s, almost all of them were cleaned up and turned into homogenous shopping zones. But of course they weren’t really cleaned up: as it so often goes, the problems were simply shooed away to another area, outside of the city center.

This is typical Marvel Bronze Age, I think. A sudden, short burst of introspection in the middle of all the dynamic fight scenes. Several faces strung together against a sort of nebulous, otherworldly background. In this case it’s… Well, I recognize Hulk, Dr. Strange, and, top left, Valkyrie. The others I don’t remember. It has been a while.

Right, Hulk. Good old Hulk. Let’s talk a bit about Hulk next time.