Month: February 2015 (Page 4 of 4)

The PopCulteer
February 6, 2015

Your PopCulteer is a bit under the weather, so rather than treat you to a long essay or a ton of photos, this week we’re just going over the cool stuff you can do in town and a little beyond. With any luck your loyal correspondent will recover sufficiently to attend Saturday’s toy show in Parkersburg, then record for RFC back in Charleston later that night. At the moment I feel like I’ve been taking Houdini punches in the gut all night.

By the way, now’s a good time to remind you fine folks to check out this week’s new Radio Free Charleston video and audio shows.

On with the stuff…

Friday

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The PopCult Bookshelf

Paul Kupperberg’s Secret Romances #1
Written by Paul Kupperberg
Art by Pat and Tim Kennedy, Daerick Gross, Sr., and various
Published by Charlton Neo
$6.99

The Charlton Neo movement, of which I have been an ardent supporter, is growing by leaps and bounds and their newest entry is Paul Kupperberg’s Secret Romances. Romance comics in this country pretty much died out in the late seventies and I believe Charlton was the last publisher regularly bringing that genre to the public. Kupperberg, in the true Charlton Comics spirit, has revived the genre that no other publisher (except for Yoe Books’ Weird Love reprint title) would go near.

Kupperberg is a veteran writer whose work I’ve been enjoying since the late 1970’s. He’s written tons of stories for DC Comics over the years featuring characters like The Doom Patrol, The Huntress, Arion Lord of Atlantis, and even Superman and Batman. Lately, he’s gained notoriety as the man who killed Archie in Archie Publications’ Life With Archie magazine.

With Secret Romances, Kupperberg is clearly writing for the joy of writing. This anthology of offbeat and sweet short romance stories is a real treat and a bit of a surprise. The stories are wonderfully written, but they’re so short that a synopsis might give away too much information.

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The PopCult Toybox

(AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

Following a disastrous fourth quarter in 2014, which followed several quarters of declining sales, Mattel parted ways with their CEO, Bryan Stockton last week. His exit was not a huge surprise, but the recent performance of the world’s number two toymaker (Lego surpassed them for the top spot last year) is a sympton of the changing toy market as globalization and shifting demographics, as well as competition from videogames and electronics, shuffled the deck in terms of conventional wisdom.

After years of dominance in fashion dolls with Barbie and die-cast cars with Hot Wheels, Mattel saw their twin pillars falter. Barbie fell behind toys based on Disney’s “Frozen” last year as the top-selling toy for girls, and that’s a double-whammy for Mattel because they were outbid by their top US competitor, Hasbro, and beginning next January, “Frozen” toys will move from Jakks Pacific to Mattel’s top rival, Hasbro.

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Dave Thomas, someone who isn’t Eric Thompson, and Joe Vallina, as they were on this radio show.

This week, the second hour (and a little more) of Radio Free Charleston on New Appalachian Radio is a distillation of an episode of the original Radio Free Charleston radio show that featured The Blind Blue Leper Society as the very first musical guests to perform live on the air.

Update: You can listen to this show now in the Voices of Appalachia archive HERE.

Joe Vallina, Eric Thompson and Dave Thomas were the band, and Joe has gone on to an impressive musical career with Feast of Stephen, Wiley Sonic and terrific solo albums. Dave Thomas sprouted an impressive beard/washboard combo and became a beloved fixture on the Charleston music scene as “Washboard Dave,” the guiding light of The Boulevard Tavern. I’m hoping that Dave or Joe will chime in on the comments and tell me what Eric has been up to.

You can listen to Radio Free Charleston’s  fun and exciting streaming radio incarnation at 10 AM and 10 PM on Tuesdays (and again at midnight Thursday) at New Appalachian Radio, part of Voices of Appalachia. If you miss it, check our the archives for previously-aired shows. You can also listen to Radio Free Charleston Saturday at Midnight. Saturday, RFC airs for six hours, starting at The Witching Hour!

This episode of the show also featured a visit from Stephen Beckner. You will hear a ton of local music circa 1989 and you’ll get an idea of the controlled anarchy that prevailed on the original RFC.

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The first full-length episode of Radio Free Charleston for 2015 features music from Farnsworth and Hellblinki, plus animation and vintage Toy Commercials. “World’s Best Comics Shirt” sports host segments shot around The Charleston Post Office on Super Bowl Sunday and the show clocks in at just under twenty minutes.

We open the show with a couple of vintage MEGO action figure commercials. We hope you like these, because we’re toying with the idea of producing a series of compilations of toy commercials for PopCult in the near future.

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Today’s art is an old marker doodle taken from an old, old sketchbook, circa 1988. I uncovered it while digging through the RFC archives for the Radio Free Charleston streaming show on New Appalachian Radio. It’s just a guy, see. Pen and ink on acid-free paper. Click to see it bigger, and check PopCult later Monday for the first full-length Radio Free Charleston video show of 2015.

Daniel Roebuck is a big-time Hollywood actor who’s been in everything from Lost To The Grumpy Cat Movie, and he also played Jay Leno in the HBO Movie The Late Shift. He’s been in The Walking Dead webisodes, episodes of CSI and Weeds and in the movies The Devil’s Rejects and John Dies At The End, among dozens of other movie and television roles. He’s also a hell of a nice guy and a collector of really cool toys and monster movie memorabilia, and in this short and very funny film which you can see below we get to see a tiny part of his epic collection.

Keep your eyes peeled for quick shots of GI Joe, Captain Action, Captain Lazer and way more cool things.

Daniel, My Brother from Daniel Roebuck on Vimeo.