PopCult

The second pick today in our all-book-day of The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide is a third collection of the art of Ron Lesser, this time focusing on his Western art. it’s a fantastic gift for fans of Westerns, fine art, commercial art and spectacular illustration.

The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 3: Wild, Wild Westerns
by Robert Deis (Author), Bill Cunningham (Editor), Tim Hewitt (Editor)
Ron Lesser (Illustrator)
introduction by James Reasoner
Subtropic Productions
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8199028783
$45.00 (discounted at Amazon)

This third volume of The Art of Ron Lesser departs from the femme fatales of the first two books in the series (Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens and Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls) and dives into the wealth of material Lesser produced for Western-themed paperback novels, movies, television and fine art.

The temptation is there to call Lesser’s art “eye candy,” but to be honest, it seems way more savory than that. This is meaty, action-filled exciting adventure art. The art alone is enough to merit long study and stir the imagination. On top of that, the stories behind the art, dealing with the demands of producing commercial art and seeing it re-used for different purposes…that stuff is really fascinating.

The level of craft on display is astounding. At a time when the world of “fine art” frowned on realism, commerical artists of the time kept alive the grand traditions of classic representative art, and they did it on a deadline and had to be proflic to earn a living. It’s great to see these artists finally getting their due.

Let’s go to the publisher’s blurb…

THE WEST WAS WILD!
And no one could visualize its raw, untamed fury and pioneer spirit like artist RON LESSER. From 1959 to today, Ron has painted hundreds of book covers, movie posters, advertisements and gallery artwork depicting the drama, the people, and the colorful vistas of the Old West.

In this 3rd volume of our The Art of Ron Lesser series we examine his portfolio of work in the Western genre illustrating some of the classics from writers like Luke Short, Louis L’Amour, John Benteen, J.T. Edson, and many more. This volume is a unique look into the life and work of an artist who had a powerful impact on our pulp culture, and framed how we look at that period of American history.

The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 3: Wild, Wild, Westerns is a companion to Vol 1: Deadly Dames and Sexy Sirens and Vol. 2: Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls. All three showcase and provide insight into the 65+ year career of the artist and his groundbreaking work within the art, publishing, advertising, and entertainment industries.

This 3rd volume feature 150 pages of full color artwork and commentary by one of the masters of the western genre. It is a unique art book of a unique artist.

I can’t really say it any better than that. This book belongs in the collection of any lover of realistic art, and any fan of the Western genre. Order The Art of Ron Lesser Volume 3: Wild, Wild Westerns directly from the publisher or any bookseller by using the ISBN Code, or find it, discounted, at Amazon.

The first pick in this second week of The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide ties into today’s episode of Prognosis on The AIR. Today and 3 PM, you can hear a special episode from 2023 devoted to Rick Wakeman’s Journey To The Center Of The Earth and Return To The Center Of The Earth. At 5 PM another episode of Prognosis will be devoted to Rick Wakeman performing live.

And that should be a good hint that our pick today is the perfect gift for fans or Rick Wakeman, Progressive Rock and hilarious storytelling. It’s a new autobiography from Rick Wakeman.

The Wizard of Prog
The Truth And Something Like The Truth
by Rick Wakeman
Ebury Spotlight
ISBN: 9781529983869
$26.72 from Blackwells (UK)

First of all, even though this book is available in Audiobook and Kindle from Amazon now, it won’t be in print in the US until next May, and that will just be in paperback. However, you can order it in hardcover form now from Blackwell’s (no relation to Mark) in the UK now, and it’s both reasonably priced and has free shipping to the States.

Aside from being a beloved virtuoso keyboard player who made his name working with David Bowie, YES, and Strawbs as well as having successful solo career, Rick Wakeman is one of the funniest men on the planet.

This is, after all, the man who turned the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction speech for the band, YES, into a long, drawn-out meandering boner joke.

Let me quote from the publisher’s blurb:

‘From the beginning to not quite the end… just yet’.

From piano-playing child prodigy, through to classically trained keyboardist and onto his rise with Yes and as a solo artist, Rick Wakeman’s life so far has been one of very dramatic spirals, spectacular comebacks and legendary rock ‘n’ roll excess.

The first of his epic concept albums, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, was released in 1973 to indifferent reviews, but was a worldwide hit, to the vast surprise of his record company. The following year, Journey to the Centre of the Earth was another phenomenon. He took it around the world, with huge orchestras and choirs, which he funded, spending every penny he’d earned. After headlining Crystal Palace Park, he suffered a heart attack aged just 25. Languishing in hospital, he wrote his next album, The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Ignoring doctors’ orders to retire, he went straight out on tour. However, the high cost of his lavishly staged concerts, combined with his second divorce, eventually caught up with him, leaving him impoverished, homeless and occasionally even sleeping rough by 1980. He lived to tell the tale and many more like it.

While Rick takes his music and creativity very seriously, he views his life as material for a sitcom. This unmissable memoir is the story of a musical genius with a taste for adventure, a delightful sense of the absurd and a winning gift for comedy. It’s the book Rick has always wanted to write and the sole unsurprising thing about it is that it’s a hell of a read.

As mentioned above, if you have a fan of Wakeman and Prog Rock on your holiday shopping list, you can’t go wrong by getting them this book from the UK, months before it’s published over here.

This week’s art is a moderately-sized acrylic piece on illustration board.  It’s inspired by my memories of the view from The Amtrak Cardinal near Washington DC on our way to New York last month.

This is from memory, but I did use parts of a couple of photos of the bridge for reference. Everything else is strictly my memory, filtered somewhat through the last few years of me trying to emulate the work of Edward Hopper.

If you want to see this image larger click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR,  we bring you a recent episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we bring you a special episode of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis. What makes it special is that, even though it’s an encore, it ties into today’s first pick in The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide.

You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page. Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

Tonight at 8 PM, tune in for The Comedy Vault. That’s followed by two-hour blocks of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast at 9 PM and 11 PM, and then an overnight assortment of our Haversham Recording Institute programs at 1 AM.

The 2025 PopCult Gift Guide will continue later this morning.

Since we have moved PopCult to an undisclosed location, away from the Charleston Gazette-Mail, I have been trying to go back and clean up broken links, missing graphics, and videos that have been yanked from YouTube. Tonight we bring you another one of those videos, originally posted here in August, 2014.

The thing is, I restored this previously four-and-a-half years ago, but that video has once again disappeared. So we’re hoping that the third time’s the charm, and this time it’ll stick around for a while I’ve gone back and plugged this video into that spot too, but since I’d gone to the trouble, I figured I’d give it an encore, because it’s that good).

Also, this version is six minutes longer, so…YAY!

Enjoy The Jam, Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England from 1982. Go back 44 years, when The Jam were a hot young English band that sprung out of the punk/new wave movement and spearheaded a short-lived Mod revival.  Paul Weller’s pre-Style Council band was one of those great musical entities that never quite managed to cross the Atlantic and find commercial success in the US. That doesn’t take away from the excellence of their R&B inflected, sharp British Pop-punk. 

Also, remember to keep checking PopCult for all our regular features and the continuation of The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide.

Sometimes, as we go in numerical order through all the video editions of Radio Free Charleston,  we come across a show that is just perfectly timed…and it’s perfectly coincidental. This time through, the only shows we’re skipping are our three “lost” episodes, and we blew past those over two years ago. It’s amazing how often, just going through the shows in order, the perfect show will just pop up for this feature.

And sometimes…we’re just off by “this much.”

This is one of those off weeks, as we take you back to October, 2015, for that year’s Halloween show, one full week after Halloween. By now, people are getting decorations and candy at 75% off and the spooky stuff is coming down as the Christmas stuff starts to go up.  Or at least some folks are putting Santa hats on their 12-foot skeletons. So consider this a last gasp of Halloween, until the next Halloween seaston begins…in about seven or eight months.

“Count Rudolf” is your host for Blood Red Shirt which is chock-full-o good Halloween-y stuff. We had music from Hurl Brickbat, The Renfields with Ari Lehman and HARRAH, plus we a plugged Kanawha Player’s production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and showed footage from the prior weekend’s Zombie Walk. We even had a batch of “weird stuff” that revisited the Pentagram Flowerbox cartoon from our first Halloween special.

‘Twas the season…at least it was last week.

Our final pick for the first week of The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide is an online retailer who provides an invaluable service to action figure collectors, especially those working in the 1/6 scale that was used for the original run of GI Joe, Marx’s Best of the West and Captain Action.  I’ve been a happy and loyal customer of Cotswold Collectibles for 35 years, and I’ve been a friend and customer of their current owner, Greg Brown, for more than 30.

We’ve featured Cotswold Collectibles in the Gift Guide in previous years, and they are still the number-one source of all things 1/6 scale in the action figure hobby.  They also have some great offerings in other scales, too.

In the interest of full disclosure: As mentioned above, I’m friends with Greg Brown, who now owns the company. I mean, who wouldn’t be?  Greg’s a great guy and I buy tons of their GI Joe-compatible figures, toys and equipment from him every year.  Mel and I made a visit to Greg’s Hershey Toy and Action Figure Show as part of our anniversary trip back in August. You can see the video HERE.

Cotswold Collectibles carries a great assortment of vintage GI Joe and Action Man items, ranging from the 1960s to the revival toys in the 1990s and beyond, and they also make their own Elite Brigade items that bring back the glory days of The Adventure Team and also veer into the military side of things.

This is pretty much the coolest action figure shopping site on the planet. It’s a clearing house for all things 1/6 scale, but they’ve also branched out into other popular scales of figures, and they have a wide range of items available to fit any budget. This is where you go for replacement body or uniform parts, or newly-created pieces that you can kitbash into something creative and unique.

You’ll find diorama pieces, uniforms, complete dressed figures, vehicles, and anything that you might need to help you get down to the serious business of playing with your toys.

Made in the USA, by Bee Active Toys

They also have an impressive selection of cool items made right here in the USA by a collection of customizers and 3D-printing geniuses. They’ve really beefed up the offerings in this area over the past year.

Cotswold also sells Greg Autore’s inflatable Ghost Tank, which is a great toy with a real cool history behind it.

Recently they added a slew of Lanard’s “Corps” figures in 1/18 and 1/6 scale, and they’ll be offering even more in the future. The “Primal Clash” line, with soliders vs. dinosaurs, is particularly cool-lookinng. You’ll also find a huge assortment of figures that are compatible with the 1/12 scale GI Joe: Classified Line.

Cotswold also sells Adventure Command sets, showing their support for the revived Super Joe line that’s been very popular with PopCult readers.

If you want to find high-quality photos of their most recent offerings, check out their website and their Facebook Page.

Over the years Cotswold Collectibles has also reached out to import terrific new 1/6 scale items from Spain, Brazil and France and they also offer a great selection of products from Dragon Models, Sideshow Toys, Hot Toys, Threezero and many other top 1/6 high-end companies.

If you have a collector of the original 12-inch GI Joe action figure, or a dioramist or action figure fan of any scale on your holiday shopping list, you need to shop at Cotswold Collectibles.

The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide will continue Monday morning.

The first pick today in The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide is a thick collection of hilarious creator-owned comic book work by Evan Dorkin, who’s known primarily for Milk and Cheese (Gone Bad), The Bill and Ted comics and The Eltingville Club. This is the perfect gift for the comic book fan with a sense of humor on your holiday shopping list.  Please note that not all comic book fans have a sense of humor, so make sure that they do before you get this for them, or bad things might result. Here’s my review from last May…

Nerd Inferno: The Essential Evan Dorkin
by Evan Dorkin
Dark Horse Books
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1506753058
$34.99

I have been a fan of cartoonist/writer, Evan Dorkin, for nearly forty years, which is amazing, considering that he doesn’t have the decency to be older than I am. Even more amazing…and something I consider a huge failing on my part, is that I have only mentioned him three times before this in the twenty-plus years of PopCult.

I mean, he checks off all the boxes: He’s a terrific cartoonist with a cult following; He brilliantly lampoons nerd culture; He’s written for Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Crayon Shin-Chan: On top of all that, when Adult Swim produced a pilot for a series based on his Eltingville Club stories, he got The Aquabats to do the opening and closting themes.

Now, I get the chance to make up for lost time by telling you about this fairly comprehensive collection of his solo works. Nerd Inferno: The Essential Evan Dorkin collects just about every bit of creator-owned work that he’s produced over the last four decades.

It’s almost 650 pages of biting satire, brilliant cartooning, snark, adventure, more snark, hilarity and a touch more snark.

In this thick collection you get nearly every issue of Milk and Cheese (Gone Bad), Dork and The Eltingville Club, along with several stray comic strips done for other magazines over the years.

These mature-readers comics mine the rich pop culture landfill for gut-busting takes on everything from Ska to Punk to Comic Book Stores, Sitcoms, Action Movies and anything else that has happened in the last sixty years or so.

In addition to the adventures of Milk and Cheese, we also get to read about the extremely nerdy adventures of The Eltingville Club, and sitcom antics of The Murder Family plus the arcane wisdom of The Invisible College of Secret Knowledge. Plus there are hundreds of one-page gag strips and other gems.

This is all done with top-flight cartooning and a skill for riffing on pop culture that rivals the best of the MST3K crew.

This book is filled with hilarious takes on things like the surprising fates of Goofy Grape and The Cruchberry Beast, and side references to how Del Shannon almost became a Traveling Wilbury. This is a book that will evoke howls of recognition with its rich tapestry of all things nerdy, along with some very dark humor, biting satire and pure silliness.

Let me quote the publisher’s blurb:

Collecting the Milk and Cheese, Eltingville Club, and Dork by Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz award-winning comics creator Evan Dorkin. Collected for the first time in an affordable omnibus edition.

The entire Eltingville Club saga. Every Milk and Cheese comic. All the fun strips, gag panels and stories from Dork.

The entire shebang is now available in one big-ass Omnibus edition, a staggering display of satire, silliness, and stupidity featuring all the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz award-winning humor comics by semi-esteemed and somewhat-beloved cartoonist Evan Dorkin. It’s going to sell out and you will cry if you don’t get a copy, so get to it, kids (This message was approved by Evan’s therapist).

Nerd Inferno is an epic collection of Dorkin’s best solo works, and it belongs in every home, even those where the people inside won’t read it. It’s really thick and heavy and has many uses beyond simply containing hysterical comic strips.

I also need to mention the contributions of Sarah Dyer, Dorkin’s wife, colorist and sometime collaborator, and also a great cartoonist in her own right. Hopefully we get an omnibus of her work soon.

You can find Nerd Inferno: The Essential Evan Dorkin at particularly hip comic book stores and booksellers, or you can have any bookseller order it, using the ISBN code…or take the lazy way out and get it from Amazon, who finally have offered it at a nice discount. It is a wonderful gift IF the comic book fan on your gift list is capable of laughing at themself.

The PopCulteer
November 6, 2026

One of the most ethical ways to buy music these days is by using Bandcamp, which on a normal day, passes along a much more equitable amount of the money you spend to the artists who make the music that keeps them in business.

Today is BANDCAMP FRIDAY!  This is the day when my favored streaming service, Bandcamp, foregoes their usual cut of the dough and lets the artists keep all the money spent on their music and merch.

If you scroll down and check out almost any post about an episode of Radio Free Charleston that has a playlist in this blog since 2023, you will find that the list of artists have links, many of which take you directly to that artist’s Bandcamp page.  This harkens back to my mantra, “Support the Local Scene. Support Independent Music. And Buy Your Music In An Ethical Manner.”

You know what to do to support the local scene and independent artists. It doesn’t get much more ethical than this. Remember, it’s not just digital downloads. You can order vinyl, CDs, Cassettes, T Shirts, hats and all kinds of other cool band merch.

Not Good Times

I was out of town Saturday night/Sunday morning when news broke that Davi Della Fiamma, the owner of Wandering Wind Meadery, had been assaulted and severely beaten by a gang of underaged demon children while closing up the bar for the night.

I’ve known Davi for years, but not closely.  For instance, I didn’t know his real name was Dave Bragg, and I wasn’t aware that he owns Wandering Wind Meadery.  I know that they always have cool events there and I’ve plugged many of them here in the blog.  I tend to feel completely out of place at breweries, meaderies and distilleries and the like because I don’t drink.  Due to allergies, even a sip would make me very sick, but since I also  really hate the taste of anything alcoholic, I don’t consider it much of a loss.

Still, I’m glad that there are places like this out there.

And I’m really pissed off at this act of needless violence. Two juveniles have been arrested and charged with malicious wounding so far, and hopefully they face severe consequences and turn in all of their vicious little friends.

The point of mentioning this is to wish Davi a quick recovery, and plug the Go Fund Me to help him deal with the medical bills, and to mention that I will be running more graphics for events at Wandering Wind Meadery. Charleston is a cool little city filled with great venues and places, and we can’t let a few evil people scare good people away.

Speaking of STUFF TO DO

It seems like there’s not a lot happening this weekend, but we’ll give it a shot. STUFF TO DO is PopCult‘s weekly guide to just a few of the great events happening in Charleston, Huntington and a few other points here in West Virginia, and sometimes a little beyond our borders, in the coming days.  During the month of November, while your humble blogger is working his fingers to the bone writing The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide, a truncated version of this feature will run as part of Friday’s PopCulteer column.

Each week I try to tell you about a few cool events all around the state that you might not know about.  If you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future you can still contact me via Social Media at Facebook,  BlueSky,  Spoutible,  Instagram  or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote.  I do ask that you send a graphic that includes the date, time and location, of the event, as well as the cost to attend.

Keep in mind that I’ll need this several days in advance, so please don’t send me a graphic on the day of the event and expect it to show up in this feature.

For much more comprehensive guides to things you can get into in our region, check out these two wonderful resources:

Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

Mya Ross at Status Quo does a much better job of compiling a list of local events than I do, and you can find the WTSQ guide to events HERE. Toss ’em a donation while you’re over there.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.  Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Among the notable music venues in town are The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe, Live at The Shop in Dunbar, Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, In Huntington, there’s local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club),  The Wandering Wind Meadery is on Charleston’s West Side, Plus there’s music in Charleston at The Blue Parrot, Sam’s Uptown Cafe and Fife Street Brewing. Plus there are free concerts almost every weekend at Taylor Books.

You might also find cool musical events at Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Here’s a few more select suggestions for STUFF TO DO in and around Charleston and Huntington this weekend, kicking off with a added feature to WWE’s live broadcast of Smackdown from the Charleston Colisseum on Friday night…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back later today for more entries in The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide, and check back for fresh content every day and all of our regular features too.

Our third entry today in The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide is a surprisingly cool Designer Barbie that, despite being a bit pricey, would fit right in with almost any 1/6 scale sci-fi diorama. It’s a great gift for the Barbie Collector or 1/6 scale hobbyist on your holiday shopping list.

Signature Barbie x Yoon Ahn Doll
by Mattel Creations
$100.00 plus tax and shipping

First of all, Yoon Ahn is the co-creator of the boundary-redefining style brand AMBUSH. A globally influential creative director, Yoon Ahn is a fashion force to be reckoned with. This first collaboration with Mattel looks like something straight out of a 1970s issue of Heavy Metal, and it’s a real winner.

The doll has action-figure-like articulation, some removable body armor, and a distinctive design that’s aesthetically  flexible enough to fit into any kind of science fiction scenario.

This doll (the doll design is by Suim Noh, while the package design is by Diana Leto) brings Yoon Ahn’s fashion concept to life using a newly-sculpted body and the neutral-expression “Kit” headsculpt. She has 13 points of articulation, which is way more than your average Barbie doll.

It’s pretty savvy of Mattel to create a doll with such a vast potential crossover audience.  There are an awful lot of lonely Astronaut GI Joes out there in space who’d appreciate some feminine companionship.

In addition, she comes with a robot cat, which has six points of articulation. This is a nice feature for the doll collectors, but it’s also a pretty cool add-on for people building futuristic dioramas.

There’s also a doll stand included, although the doll does actually hold her balance pretty well.

Here’s Mattel’s blurb:

Take a trip through time to the future of fashion innovation! We partnered with genre-defying designer Yoon Ahn to bring to life one of our most unique dolls ever, an exploration of the Barbie of tomorrow. Pulling inspiration from anime, street style, and Ahn’s distinct visionary perspective, this robot-esque Barbie and her pet robot cat blend clean minimalist lines with an artistically technological feel. Together, they’re a pair of creations unlike anything else we’ve ever made.

You can order the Yoon Anh Signature Barbie Doll directly from Mattel Creations. I don’t believe you need to be a member of any of the clubs to buy this item. It’s a great gift for the futurist Doll Collector or 1/6 scale action figure collector on your holiday shopping list.

2027 Calendar
Featuring Art by Ian Bode
$35.00, from Ian Bode Art

The second pick today in The 2026 PopCult Gift Guide is a new calendar (for 2027) featuring art by Charleston’s own, Ian Bode.

Ian is a longtime friend of PopCult (Mel and Rudy have turned up in the background of a few of his pieces), and he’s got a lovely, distinctive style that stakes out its own very original place somewhere near classic Psychedelic Art and the work of Keith Haring and Sergio Aragones. He truly elevates traidtional cartooning to the level of fine art.

He’s also been providing the caricatures for FestivAll’s “Three Things” for years.

I’m going to quote a bit from his official bio here:

Ian Bode was born and raised in Charleston, WV. After leaving WV in his late teens and traveling around the country, he returned to become a self-taught, full-time artist. His work is displayed in galleries, public buildings, and private collections across the country. He also collaborates with other visual artists and graphic designers on commercial projects.

In addition, he has individually and collaboratively made several 2D and 3D public art projects. His most recognizable style is a graphically narrative, cartoon-oriented world filled with his black and white faceless characters collectively called “The Passenger.” This faceless cartoon is a vacuum into which the viewer’s identify and awareness can be filled in. The viewer is in the emotive driver’s seat, much like The Passenger.

Using repeating themes, colors, and icons, he aims to establish a visual language that makes each piece relatable to the other creating a universe with loose laws and a sequential narrative that does not intrude or contradict itself. He was named WV Artist of the Year 2018 by West Virginia Living magazine.

If you live around Charleston, you’ve seen Ian’s art. Now you can bring some of it home to look at every day. Aside from this calendar, you can find Ian’s art on T-shirts, pins, prints and more at his website.

Orders placed now should arrive in time for Christmas.

Recommended for the art lover or proud (WV) Charlestonian on your holiday shopping list.