Author: Rudy Panucci (Page 4 of 126)

The PopCulteer
September 19, 2025

Back in May, I first told you about the turmoil surrounding the comic book industry in the wake of the bankruptcy of Diamond Comics Distributors, who had a monopoly on comic book distribution in this country for close to three decades.

During and after the pandemic things changed.  DC Comics left Diamond, and is now handled by a new company called Lunar. Several publishers followed suit.  Not long after that, Marvel left Diamond and is now handled by Penguin Random House, the long-established book publisher/distributor, who decided to get into comics. Having lost their monopoly, which allowed them to dictate terms to both publishers and retailers that were less than ideal, Diamond’s business model was not sustainable.They entered bankruptcy in January, and a sale was overseen by the Bankruptcy court of the District of Baltimore, Maryland.

I’d like to be able to tell you how it all shook out, but sad to say, while Diamond Comics as we knew it is dead, the corpse is still shaking.

We still don’t know exactly how far the ripple effect will resonate, but there are some key things you might want to know.

Diamond, after the bankruptcy sale, is multiple entities.  The original Diamond, now commonly referred to as “Diamond Debtors” is attempting to wrap up the final matters of business before they can cease to exist. They do not seem to be doing this in an thical manner.

The new Diamond Distributors, owned by acompany called Ad Populum, bought the US distribution business, plus Diamond Book Distributors, Diamond Select Toys & Collectibles, Diamond Previews, Collectible Grading Authority, and other assets.  Diamond Select Toys was shut down almost immediately, with the entire staff being laid off. CGA was sold off to new owners in June. Free Comic Book Day is rumored to be up for sale, with people wondering why anybody would bother buying it.

Diamond Previews limped along until last month, when the once phone-book-sized catalog went digital-only. Just days ago, The entire staff of Diamond Previews was laid off, including some who had been workinng there since 1991. Many comics fans are mourning this loss. I am not among them. With so many publishers springing up over the last couple of decades, the monthly publication had swollen to several hundred pages…of them technically ads…and it just took up way the hell too much space.

It’s not clear if they even want to be in the business of distributing comics. They may have just wanted a distribution pipeline to get product from their sister companies, NECA, Kidrobot, and WizKids into comic book shops.

Alliance Games, Diamond’s most profitable division, was sold to a Canadian company, Universal distribution.  Diamond Comics Distribution UK was sold to its management team.

Universal is expected to attempt to enter the US Comics distiribution business by expanding, putting them in direct competition with the new Diamond Comics, owned by Ad Populum. That competition may be one-sided since almost every publisher has abandoned the new Diamond.

There is also a three-way tug of war between the Diamond Debtors, 130 publishers and the new Diamond over inventory that was consigned to the original Diamond Comics following their bankruptcy filing in January. Millions of dollars of inventory is being claimed by the Diamond Debtors, who want to sell it off at liquidation prices to pay off a line of credit that was extended to them by JP Morgan Chase.  The publishers gave that inventory to Diamond to allow them to continue to operate, business as usual, during the bankruptcy process, and their contract clearly states that it was a consignment deal, and that not only would Diamond have to return that inventory to them at Diamon’d expense, when asked, and that it was the property of the publisher until sold to a retailer. Ad Populum, whose deal to buy Diamond apparently excluded the consignment inventory, had been selling it to retailers for months without remitting payment to either the publishers or the the Diamond Debtors.

Clearly, the publishers own the inventory and deserve to be paid. Ad Populum claims to be holding the money in escrow until the courts decide who owns what. The Diamond Debtors lost their first fight over this inventory and are now in the process of suing each individual publisher (all 130 of them) for their inventory, claiming that their clearly-worded contracts are void because of some dubious technicality of Maryland law over a form that wasn’t filed with the court.

What I gave you is just the Cliff’s Notes version. To quote myself from what I wrote in May, “I have not covered this in-depth because it’s a morass of legalese and financial chicanery, but you can find some great reporting about it at Comics Beat and at Bleeding Cool.”

It’s a bigger mess than you might think. JP Morgan Chase loaned Diamond over eight million dollars to cover the cost of doing business, and may not see a penny of it. AENT, a competing bidder for the company, put up almost eight million dollars themselves, before withdrawing their bid after discovering outright lies that inflated the value of the company. They have yet to have their bidding fee returned.

Many of the publishers are facing bankruptcy of their own if they don’t get paid for their product, or at least get it back so they can sell it at full price.  If Diamond Debtors is allowed to liquidate their inventory for pennies on the dollar, the affected publishers will find themselves competing with their own product being sold at Ollie’s for a fraction of what they paid to print it.

And some of those publishers have had no money coming in for several months,  which is affecting how much they can afford to publish now, and what projects they can take on in the future. Making matters worse, for several months they were simply ghosted by the Diamond Debtors and the new Diamond when they’d ask about either getting paid or getting their inventory back.

I didn’t even mention that, over the years, Diamond had extended lines of credit to hundreds of comic book shops, and now the Diamond Debtors is re-examining the books and is attempting to claw back some of that money, with added onerous interest charges.

DC Comics, Marvel, Image and the larger independents wills survive, easily.  Mid-size publishers could take major hits, some of them fatal, if they lose the rights to the inventory that they loaned to Diamond in good faith. They are already losing tens of thousands in legal fees fighting all these dubious court maneuvers. Several of them are turning to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sources to stay in business, one project at a time.

Many people are wondering about the role of Steve Geppi, the founder and former owner of Diamond in all this.  He apparently retained several of what were considered Diamond assets, including Gemstone Publishing (who publish The Overstreet Price Guide), a massive collection of comic book art, Folks who are suspicious that Geppi had been planning Diamond’s bankruptcy for more than six years have speculated that he started moving assets around as early as 2018, but there has been no proof of that. It has been reported that he is personally on the hook for any shortfall between what Diamond Debtors can collect, and what JP Morgan Chase is still owed. Geppi’s personal financial status has been a subject of speculation for almost fifteen years. In 2018 Geppi made a multi-million dollar donation of materials from his now-closed museum to the Library of Congress, so it’s hard to say how much money has been shuffled around since then.

There are still a lot of questions, and with the latest legal complications, this matter could remain unsettled until well into next year.

Meanwhile, comic books are still making their way into stores via a network of better-managed companies, with competition bringing some better deals for retailers and few restrictions on how they do business.

Diamond Previews and Diamond Select Toys are dead. The fate of Free Comic Book Day is up in the air.

And writing about the actions of the Diamond Debtors reminds me…today is talk like a pirate day.

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check this blog every day for fresh content and all our regular features.

This weekend we have festivals, theater, and ArtWalks all over the state.  Charleston’s ArtWalk happens Thursday, while Huntington’s is on Friday, both of them from 5 PM to 8 PM.

There are so many things going on all around the Mountain State that I know there’s no way I can cover everything. As always, I recommend you check social media to see if there are any cool car shows, food or drink festivals, theatrical events, haunted trails or houses, petting zoos, sportsball matches, stamp collecting conventions, synchronized spitting meets, or obscure paloozas of any kind that I may have missed.

You’ll find graphics for festivals below, but note that you can get full details of the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant HERE.  Info about the Dunbar Fall Festival can be found at their Facebook Page. Details about The WV Country Roads Festival in New Martinsville can be found HERE.  There’s also some kind of Pickle event happening at Slack Plaza. I guess there was a demand for that.

There’s also theater happening in Saint Albans and Huntington. Check the graphics below for those.

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that 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.

City Center Live at Slack Plaza in Charleston has announced their schedule for the rest of summer and early fall.  You can find their schedule HERE.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have our old friend, Sean Richardson on Friday, and Travis Vandal on Saturday.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights.  On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and 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. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment.  I am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon and those look to be incredible.

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.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, don’t be a jerk about it.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

FESTIVALS

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The PopCult Toybox

This post is a flashback to twenty years ago. Twenty years and three days ago, to be exact. The first part of this post is an exact repost of the first mention of Captain Action in this blog. After that, I will bring you up to date on the adventures of The Good Captain and The Bad Doctor…

When I was a kid, there was one toy that I wanted more than anything—the Dr. Evil Gift Set! It was really called the “Dr. Evil Lab Set”, but “gift set” sounds so much funnier when matched with “Dr. Evil.” Anyway, this set filled me with an early instance of what I have come to call “toy lust.” I haven’t managed to lose that affliction as an adult, either. I wouldn’t write so much about toy collecting if I weren’t so heavily under the influence of it.

This is not the lame Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. I’m talking about the REAL Dr. Evil–the blue-skinned guy with the bug eyes and exposed brain who came from Alpha Centuari to fight Captain Action. (The guy in the movie is just a bald parody of Lorne Michaels.)

The blue Dr. Evil was Captain Action’s worst enemy! Super-intelligent and capable of destroying the world, he could kick the movie Dr. Evil’s butt.

Recalling Captain Action

As a reminder, since not many people remember him, Captain Action was a GI Joe-sized action figure made by Ideal Toys. His gimmick was that you could buy costumes (with cool, head-covering rubber masks) that allowed you to dress Captain Action as an impressive variety of other superheroes. A quick change of clothes and the Captain could turn into Superman, Batman, Spider-man, The Phantom, The Green Hornet, and other larger-than-life icons. He was one of the coolest toys every made.

But I digress.

For Christmas 1968 I really wanted the Dr. Evil Gift Set. It came with Dr. Evil, two disguises, a lab coat, and the evil hypnotic eye. In 1968, I already had Captain Action and I really wanted a bad guy for him to fight. Santa (in the form of my parents) had the not-so-good Doctor on lay-away at Arlan’s Department Store (now the site of Sport Mart on the South side of the Patrick Street Bridge. But before they could pick him up, Arlan’s burned to the ground. Nobody else in town had Dr. Evil, so for Christmas, and I wound up with a Marx Chief Cherokee. Talk about a letdown.

Evil Reappears

Fifteen years ago, a mint-in-box Dr. Evil Lab Set would set you back more than two grand. I haven’t checked the price lately, but I think that if you want one now, you have to sweeten the pot with your firstborn or a kidney or something. So I went without Dr. Evil in my collection… until 30 years had passed.

In 1998, a company called “Playing Mantis” was making a name for themselves by bringing back some of the beloved toys from the ’60s and ’70s. They’d already revived Johnny Lightning cars and the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle, when word leaked out they were thinking about bringing back Captain Action.

I was jazzed. After tracking down and pestering their PR person, Suzi Klimek, I got the story in TOY TRADER Magazine and scooped the toy press in trumpeting the return of one of the most collectible toys from the ’60s superhero boom.

And because I was writing a monthly column about action figures, I was sent complimentary copies of Captain Action and Dr. Evil to review.

I waited 30 years to get my hands on Dr. Evil, and of course I gave it a glowing review. You don’t want to cross Dr. Evil!

Even without the goodies from the Lab Set (just to get the Hypnotic Eye on eBay will cost you more than a Kia), this was a very satisfying moment. As I type this, Dr. Evil is watching over me from his spot of honor in my office.

And that’s why I collect toys. It’s either the warm, fuzzy feeling of recapturing my childhood, or the trauma caused by not getting Dr. Evil when I wanted him. One of these days I’ll tell you about how it took me 25 years to get a DEVO “Duty Now For The Future” T-shirt.

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So, since this post went live, during the first month of PopCult, many, many things have happened with Captain Action and Doctor Evil. Also, Sport Mart has long since gone under and I think the building now hosts some kind of indoor bouncy house or trampoline park. 

On the first annivesary of this blog, I posted this brief update, which linked back and also took you to another blog, which sadly, is no long with us. Still, we have this cool graphic. 

In observance of our anniversary week here at PopCult, our pick for Cool Toy Of The Week is one of my favorites from my childhood. In fact, I wrote about Captain Action and his nemesis, Dr. Evil, last year right here and here. The reason I’m picking Captain Action again is because Robby Reed, over at Dial “B” For Blog, is in the midst of a six-part series of articles on the good Captain, and I can just link to it, and let him do all the work. Read the first installment here, the second here, and then check back to his blog every day for the next four parts!

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Back to Dr. Evil, at the 2024 WonderFest in Lousiville, I met Daniel Roebuck, an actor of no small career, and a fellow fan of Captain Action. When I told him how we knew each other online, he immediately sent me to the dealer room to gaze at something…it was the first time in my life that I actually laid my eyes on a real, mint-in-box, Dr. Evil Lab Set…

So, the cool thing Danny sent me to gaze upon, hiding amid Ricky Puckett’s booth (I know Ricky from The Kentuckiana GI Joe Expo) was an absolute dead-mint condition Dr. Evil Lab Set.

I got to see Ricky’s Lab Set a few more times before he sold it earlier this year, shortly after the Kentuckiana WinterFest show. Had I been insanely rich, I would’ve snapped it up, even at more than five grand.

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Catching up more over the past two decades, in 2007 I reviewed a reissue of the Aurora Captain Action model kit. The links in that article need to be updated. In fact, you can expect more than a few dead links to show up in the posts I link to in this post. I featured Captain Action commercials in a Sunday Evening Video in 2008, but that post has so much dead code in it that I’ll probably just refurbish it for a new SEV post this weekend instead of linking it here.

In 2011 I reviewed a Captain Action comic book with a local connection, and broke the news of a revival of the beloved action figure at retail.  The following year I wrote in depth about that revival, HERE, HERE and HERE and the following year I reviewed a pulp novel about Captain Action HERE.

The 2012 revival, at Toys R Us and hobby shops, came and went with some moderate success, but then there were a series of other attempts to revive Captain Action in other formats, as a four-inch figure, and as a stylized Pop-type figure. We even had a Captain Action Cat comic book. I’m not going to hunt down all the links, but if you’re curious, you can use the search function of this blog.  I’ve written about the collection of his comic book adventures, the big 2012 revival at Toys R Us, the reproduction of his card game, his life as a 4-inch action figure, and some of the teases and hints at previous editions of SDCC (that’s the San Diego Comic Con, by the way).

In 2015 I proclaimed Captain Action to be one of the holy trinity of action figures, alongside GI Joe and Johnny West. I stand by this.

In 2016 I caught up with Ed Catto and Joe Ahearn, the stewards of Captain Action Enterprises at Toy Fair in New York, and posted a quick video interview.

An ongoing high-end collectible revival of Captain Action has been in the works for much of the past decade. We told you about it in 2018, and last year, with Captain Action Enterprises now working with LBO, it seems like it’s just about to happen.

I think Captain Action is one of, in not THE coolest action figure of all time.

And I’ve been writing about him and Dr. Evil for twenty years to prove it.

Full disclosure here: If you count when I wrote about him for Toy Trader Magazine, I’ve been writing about Captain Action since 1998. Now I feel old.

Tuesday is always a great day to tune into The AIR  with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to plonk your magic twanger. To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

Radio Free Charleston is all-new this week and we open with an advance listen to the new single by Dropcoat, “Geezer,” which will be streaming out the wazoo this coming Friday. You may even be able to pre-save it on the wazoo of your choice.

We alo have some great new stuff from our Nashville via Chicago pipeline, with new tracks from Scott Collins and Aliza Hava, plus Vinto Van Go, who are just from Chicago, and not Nashville, for those of you scoring at home.

On top of that we have killer new local tunes from Of The Dell, Gardenn and Erik Woods, plus a set of Americana and a tribute to Buddy Holly, nine days after what would have been his 89th birthday.

Check out this playlist, with links to the artist’s page, where available…

Radio Free Charleston V5 241

hour one
Dropcoat “Geezer”
Of The Dell “Yes I Will”
The Paranoid Style “Tearing The Ticket”
Vinto Van Go“Cards On The Table”
The Settlement “Sweetness”
Aliza Hava “Love Who You Are”
Scott Collins “Extinguish The Flame”
The Surfrajettes “Satan’s Holiday”
The Darkness “The Battle For Gadget Land”
Red Audio “Edgar”
The Renfields “Prom Night”
Temtris “Murder of Crows”
Byzantine “Harbinger”

hour two
Gardenn “Mountain Mama”
Erik Woods “Tigers”
A Tale of Two “Is It Me”
Tyler Childers “Down Under”
Ringo Starr “String Theory”
Sierra Ferrell w/Nikki Lane “A Lesson In Leavin”
Sheryl Crow “The New Normal”
The M.F.B “P.H. Steve”
The Heavy Hitters Band “Smoke ’em”
Lady D“Times Like These”
Gary Moore with Phil Lynott “Still In Love With You”
Marc Ribot “Map of a Blue City”
Ron Sowell “Everything That Goes Round comes Round”

hour three
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess  “Invisible”
M Robin Scott “Crossfire”
Messer Chups “Son of Chupacabra”
Dice Johnson “Caravan”
Matt Berry/Project Gemini “Stay On The Ground (Woodland Get-Down Version)”
Joy Viver “How”
Ghoulbox “Dead, White & Gloom”
Brian Diller “Crying, Waiting, Hoping”
Shoes “Words of Love”
John Lennon “Peggy Sue”
Paul McCartney “It’s So Easy”
The Purple Helmets “Not Fade Away”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Sunday at 8 PM and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of last week’s episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM  The Swing Shift is an encore of two recent episodes.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Thursday at 9 AM,  Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursdays and Sundays.

Your humble blogger’s hands were actually working this weekend, and a pressing deadline was dealt with and finished early, so you get some fresh off the easel art this week, dashed off Sunday evening as dusk fell with a clunk.

This is a small color rough for an image I’ve been wanting to paint for a while. It’s based on a couple of photos I took last June while riding the Brown line around Chicago’s famed Loop District. I was able to capture the point where you can look out the window as you go around a turn and see the end of the train you’re riding.

Yay!

This is acrylic on illustration board, and I did it so fast that I didn’t bother to fix the big smudge near the middle. I’m going to repeat this on a larger canvas eventually anyway. I just wanted to see if I could capture the color and the lighting while not painting all the reflections and the dirt on the windows.

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 an encore of a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM we do the same with Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  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.

At 8 PM you can hear a classic episode of The Comedy Vault that delivers a boot to the head, courtesy of the Canadian comedy troupe, The Frantics.

Tonight at 9 PM we bring you our new Monday night line-up featuring two hours each of Curtain Call and Beatles Blast, plus six hours overnight with an assortment of our programming from Haversham Recording Institute: Psychedelic Shack, Sydney’s Big Electric Cat and Prognosis.

Your humble blogger is under deadline pressure, but two spectacular music videos with local connections have fallen into my lap to bring you this week.

Above you see “Harbingers,” the title track of the recently-released new album by Byzantine.

About this video, Byzantine’s guiding light, Chris Ojeda, says:

This video has taken months for us curate. We wanted to continue our path of handmade original artwork for this new album.

My daughter Mallory Ojeda and I wrote the script for the story, hired a young Claymation artist from Mexico named Adrian Venti to hand build every scene out of clay and brought Holly Grayson with Screaming Butterfly Entertainment (Justinian Code, The Cicada Tree, The Agonies) to edit all the footage to make this beautiful music video about a boy who, after losing his father, searches for his importance in life, only to be lured in by a voracious Wolf who steers the boy down a path of greed and selfishness. The boy is eventually saved by one random act of kindness towards a lone Raven. Ravens never forget.

Mallory and I are fans of all things stop motion. Movies like Fantastic Mr. Fox, Coraline, James And The Giant Peach, and music videos from Peter Gabriel, Bjork, Tool, and Primus. We modelled the main character after my six-year-old son, Henry. I hope you guys enjoy this labor of love and appreciate the amount of work and symbolism that has gone into the script, the Claymation, and the brilliant editing. Our team decided to push the creative aspect as far as we can and tell this story of a boy who just wants to be important.

As you can see, it’s an amazing piece of work.

Another amazing piece of work is at the bottom of this post.

It’s the second collaboration between Sirius Bluray and my old friend (and RFC fave) David Synn, called “The Oak Tree.”

I don’t have as much info about the production, but it’s a terrific piece of music and great video, so we get the rare treat of having two locally-connected music videos turn up within a day of each other.

Check it out…

From March, 2012 we bring you RFC 152, “Machine of Madness Shirt,” with music from Linework, The Tom McGees and the team of Chad Foss and Sean Sydnor. There;s also a couple of weird short films and some animation, and Lee Harrah is on hand to plug a then-upcoming all-ages show.

Our first musical guest this week was Linework, a veteran metal band from Charleston for whom I created a music video using footage shot at Mission Coalition the previous fall, and set to their studio recording, “The Finishers.” We also featured live footage of The Tom McGees, recorded at The Blue Parrot, performing their song, “The Choice.”  Wrapping up the music on this show we ended with Chad Foss and Sean Sydnor performing the Bill Withers classic, “Ain’t No Sunshine.

Also on hand in this show, which was hosted from various locations on Charleston’s West Side, are a couple of short films and the aforementioned Mr. Harrah. You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCulteer
September 12, 2025

Today’s PopCulteer was supposed to be a special preview of a cool new pop culture item with an exciting launch and a local connection. I had it pre-written, and timed to go live with the offical press conference launch.

Then, twenty minutes before my pre-written post was set to go live, I got a frantic phone call telling me that the project has been delayed at least three months, and to please not run any information or images about it yet.

The timing wasn’t great, but I don’t want to burn a source or unintentionally leak anything early that might screw things up for anybody. So I spiked that post for now.

And that left me without a post for today.  I am not prepared to run an appropriate obituary for Anne Saville, which she most assuradely deserves. That will wait until I have the time to do it right.

I’m also not inclined to cover any third-rail current events that folks might be coming to this blog to avoid.

Luckily, I have a stockpile of stuff to run to in case of such an event as this. So, here are some hastily-assembled photos from my recent travels that I haven’t posted here yet….

I have dozens of photos from the model contest at WonderFest in Louisville  that haven’t seen the light of day yet. Here’s one of them.

It was cool to visit Rotofugi in Chicago again, for what must have been the first time in three or four years, back in June.

While I posted a photo of the giant traditional Big Boy from The American Sign Museum in Cinncinnati, I forgot to share this pic of the slimmer, Frisch’s Big Boy that they also have.

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It’s still technically summer, even though some recent cool days and a month-long drout has leaves changing early in places, and it just seems sort of Autumnal.  However, rest assured that unberable heat is back in the forecast for the next week or so, so it’ll feel like July again soon.  And now with the ersatz weather report out of the way, how about we jump all over the state for even more STUFF TO DO?

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or possibly Elon’s beast, if it should ever choose to forgive me.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that 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.

City Center Live at Slack Plaza in Charleston has announced their schedule for the summer.  You can find their schedule HERE.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they have Steve Himes on Friday, and Ken Kruger with Anne McConnell on Saturday.  Sunday at 2 PM you can hear Ray + Jon during the open house memorial for Taylor Books’ founder, Anne Saville, who passed away earlier this week.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights.  On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and 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. Pumzi’s looks to be beefing up their offerings in the coming weeks and months, so be sure to check that link in case we miss something.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

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.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff. If somebody asks you to refrain, don’t be a jerk about it.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events happening over the next several days that I was able to scrounge up online…

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To be clear here, today I’m going to bring you a post from exactly twenty years…and one day…ago in this blog. For some reason (and this was just in the second week of yours truly blogging), I had four posts go live on September 9, 2005, and then no more for a few days afterward. But this is an important one, so I’m going to revisit it here, with newly-restored graphics. PopCult shares a birthday with Jack Kirby, the man who created the bulk of the Marvel Comics Universe. In this post, I was a little timid about challenging the claims that Stan Lee was the main creator, but I’ve since corrected the record. 

This early in the blog, I was trying to establish my take on pop culture with my readers, and this was the first mention of Jack Kirby, and I thought that, since I’ve got outside work tying me up today, it might be a good time to look back at what I was writing two decades ago. 

Okay, there are few things cooler in this world than the creative legacy of Jack Kirby (1917-1994).

This is the guy who co-created Captain America in the 1940s, and gave the comic book world loads of memorable characters like The Newsboy Legion, The Vision, Sandman, The Challengers Of The Unknown, among other classics.

With his partner Joe Simon, he was responsible for the first horror and romance comics. Simon and Kirby split up in the 1950s, and on his own, Kirby was responsible for great work for DC, Marvel, and newspaper comics.

Kirby teamed with Stan Lee at Marvel Comics in the 1960s, and together, they created the Fantastic Four, and laid the groundwork for the Marvel Comics empire. When you see The X Men, The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer, The Hulk, and almost all the other Marvel heroes, you’re looking at Jack Kirby creations.

When he left Marvel to work for DC Comics, at an age when most cartoonists are contemplating retirement, he still had enough left in his tank to bring us classics like Kamandi, The New Gods, Mister Miracle, and Etrigan, the Demon.

Perhaps because he’s not the one whose uncle owned the company, Kirby gets a bit of a short shrift when it comes to things like putting his name on blockbuster movies based on his Marvel co-creations (Fantastic Four, Hulk, X Men), and his estate doesn’t even get paid royalties when Marvel reprints his classic work. Even when they do it in a coffee-table book called “Marvel Visionaries: Jack Kirby.”

DC treats Kirby better, but he’s responsible for so much of what makes up comic books today that he really deserves more acclaim.

So, it’s really cool that Kirby now has a museum dedicated to his work. It’s about time the guy got the credit he deserves. This is a guy who was creating memorable characters from the 1930s to the 1980s. Most of the modern-day universes of both Marvel and DC Comics are deeply-rooted in Kirby’s concepts and creations.

The museum is an online presence for now, with the stated goal of developing a traveling retrospective of Kirby’s work. Brought to life by Randolph Hoppe, Kirby’s daughter, Lisa, and John Morrow (publisher of JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR ,along with other great books and magazines that preserve comic book history), the Jack Kirby Museum is a long overdue honor for the man who almost single-handedly created the modern comic book. Check out the Kirby Museum here

It’s a good start when it comes to recognizing the plucky little Brooklynite, without whom we would not have two-thirds of today’s most recognizable comic book favorites. And think how cool it would be if the Avampato Museum at the Clay Center could sign on to host the traveling retrospective when it starts in 2007. {Update: It hasn’t happened yet}