Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 739)

Not quite four years ago, I alerted my readers to a very cool comic book project, The Masters.

This is a really fun comic book mini-series, created by Austin Hough and dripping with retro 1970s style.

With the aid of several respected comics veterans, All five issues of The Masters have been Kickstarted and published, and now you can help make the deluxe collected edition a reality.

The Masters is a really cool concept that mixes villains inspired by famous artists with some lesser-known, but still iconic, superheroes.

This is the complete collection of The Masters Issues 1 through 5, plus the exclusive “Issue 0,” chronicling the story behind the story of the creation of The Masters.  It contains: all of the content from the first five issues; including all of the artist bios, mazes, parody ads, and editor’s notes.  Bonus materials include: All of the variant covers; All of the bonus Kickstarter pin-ups and posters; The complete Easter Egg reveals; Images of the original black and white art; Emails between artists and author; Original model sheets; Rough sketches; And images of original notes from the author, Austin Hough.

All in all, you’ll get 360 pages of homage-laden, cruncy Bronze-age wonderfulness!

Austin has gathered together a “who’s who” of classic silver and bronze-age comic book artists to pit the villains he’s created against a wild collection of some of the most fun public domain superheroes available. A partial list of the artists involved include Ramona Fradon, Pablo Marcos, Mike Grell, Joe Staton, Bob Hall, Romeo Tanghal, Alan Weiss, Mike Vosburg, Val Mayerik, Joe Rubinstein, Ron Wilson, Alex Saviuk, Arvell Jones, Al Milgrom, Kerry Gammill, Chuck Patton, Tom Grummett, Geof Isherwood, Bart Sears, Darryl Banks, Stéphane Roux, Mike Lilly, Art Baltazar, Jimmy Palmiotti, Tom Morgan and more. Quite a bit of work on this book, including the hilarious Hostess snacks parody ads, were the work of Mort Todd, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago.

The story pits a group of super heroes against the villains in the manner of the classic Batman team-up comic, The Brave and Bold, so that in each issue we had two or more of our revitalized Golden Age heroes teaming up to take on our artistically-influenced bad guys. Not only do my comic book nerd buttons get pushed, but also my art nerd senses are tingling as we are treated to Villains inspired by the works of Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte,Keith Haring, Ansel Adams and Toulouse Latrec.  The Masters are: Sir Real Ordeal, The Clerk, Graffiti, Panorama, and Monsieur Petit Renard.

The covers to the comics pay homage to classic covers from the 70s, and 80s, and the rewards for this Omnibus are vast and exceedingly clever.  Plus they’re loads of fun and will tickle the nostalgic fancy of comic book fans of…ahem…a certain age.

Available add-ons to the Omnibus include a variety of great posters, plus several terrific homage items, like  A treasury-sized reprint of the fifth issue, a 2026 Calendar that may seem very familiar to comics fans from fifty years ago, a set of Slurpee Cups with the heroes on them, stickers and trading cards very much like the ones some of us grew up collecting, as well as pins, pin-ups, Halloween masks, jigsaw puzzles, action figures and more.

It’s all loads of fun and might make you feel like a kid again. You ucan find the Kickstarter campaign HERE.  A quick check tells me it’s already fully-funded. Check out this trailer video, and below that catch a glimpse of just some of the cool add-ons:

The PopCult Bookshelf

The Art of George Wilson
by Anthony Taylor (Author), Daniel Herman (Editor), George Wilson (Artist)
Hermes Press
ISBN: 978-1-61345-288-2
$75.00

The Art of George Wilson is an absolutely gorgeous hardcover coffee-table book that collects and celebrates one of the most widely-distributed artists of the 20th century, who sadly did the vast majority of his work anonymously.

Anthony Taylor (disclosure time: Anthony is a friend and I bought my copy of this book from him after hanging out at the Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo in July), has managed to uncover the life story of a very private man who would probably be extremely pleased, and equally perplexed to be getting so much recognition.  Along with Taylor’s great bio, the book includes the only known interview with Wilson.

Taylor even relates a secret from his past that Wilson couldn’t talk about during most of his lifetime. During WWII Wilson was part of the “Ghost Army” crew, a member of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, whose exploits might be familiar to regular readers of this blog. Their work was classified up until two years before Wilson passed away.

This book is an invaluable and long overdue recognition of a man who was part of the lives of millions of kids who never knew his name. It’s a missing piece of comic book history.

Let me quote the book’s PR blurb:

What made many of the great adventure comics of the 1960s so attractive were their fantastic painted covers by artist George Wilson. Unlike other comic book covers of the era, Wilson’s covers harkened back to the era of pulp magazines and were spectacularly eye-catching. He turned in efforts for literally hundreds of comics titles including: Classics Illustrated, The Twilight Zone, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Dr.Solar, Magnus Robot Fighter, Turok, Son of Stone and Star Trek, to name but a few.

This new art book focuses on over 300 examples of his cover art and features numerous examples of Wilson’s artwork scanned from the originals together with many of the book covers he created including his extensive run on Avon’s The Phantom (as well as his work on the Gold Key version).

The reason Wilson is so deserving of the accolades is that his work is just so damned impressive. There is a long standing snobbery in the world of fine art that looks down on commercial artists. Despite the Pop Art movement of the 1960s, even today we find resistance to the idea of commercial illustrators and comic book artists being considered alongside the artists who play the gallery game.

Unless, of course, those artists had their work traced by Roy Lichtenstein.

This book should help change that skewed perception. Wilson’s work, produced quickly on a tight deadline, could hang in any gallery and outshine many of the “fine artists” who are critically acclaimed, but fail to create any meaningful emotional connection.

Seeing so much of Wilson’s work in one place, most of it free of the text and trade dress that obscured it on comic book covers, reveals that Wilson was a technically brilliant painter, working mainly in gauche, who had a mastery of light and shadow in a league with Edward Hopper, mixed with a sense of drama and fantasy that rivals the best of the surrealists.

The Art of George Wilson is relevatory for art lovers, and is a nostalgic treat for those of us who grew up seeing those spectacular comic book covers that captured our imagination…and made us wonder who painted them. Also of note is a great introduction by contemporary artist, Joe Jusko that really illustrates the influence that Wilson had on a generation of artists, most of whom never knew his name.

The Art of George Wilson can be ordered directly from Hermes Press. You may be able to order it through your favorite bookseller by using the ISBN code, but the distribution of this book has been hampered somewhat by the bankruptcy of Diamond Distribution.

Tuesday is a great day to tune into The AIR  with a new episode of Radio Free Charleston to thrill and delight you! 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.

This week  Radio Free Charleston is loaded with an hour of great new music from old friends and new favorites and two hours of music recorded at The Empty Glass, in Charleston, West Virginia.

Our first hour opens with a brand-new tune from Deni Bonet.  Following that we have some great new tracks from Terry White and Pramuk, courtesy of our Chicago pipeline, as well as new tunes form J. Marinelli, Novelty Island, Erik Woods, Fiona Apple and The Paranoid Style.

I also remind you a few times that this coming Friday is Bandcamp Friday. You know what to do.

Our second and third hours are comprised entirely of music recorded live at The Empty Glass.  Chris Chaber,  the beloved former longtime owner of the Glass passed away over the weekend, following a long illness that saw him sell the bar and move to Connecticut. Chris was a tireless champion of local music and his loss will be felt for a long time by many.

I didn’t know quite the best way to acknowledge his passing here in the blog, then I realized that there was no better way than to play the music he loved so much. I will be forever in his debt for letting us record so many video episodes of RFC at The Empty Glass, and for all the support that he’s shown every musician and music lover in this city.

He was one of the best, and it sucks that’s he’s gone.

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

Radio Free Charleston V5 239

hour one
Deni Bonet “(All Around The World) Music Is Love”
Terry White “Out of Reach”
Novelty Island “The Only Train Driver In England”
The Paranoid Style “Tearing The Ticket”
Pramuk “Mystery Man”
Erik Woods “Liberated”
A Tale of Two “Devil Did The Deed (Not me)”
J Marinelli“Casey Jones (The Union Scab)”
The Strawbs “Part of the Union”
Feast of Stephen “Coal Tattoo”
Farnsworth “American Dream”
Byzantine “Servitude”
Jethro Tull “Working John, Working Joe”
Fiona Apple “Heart of Gold”
Emmalea Deal & The Hot Mess “Sour”

hour two
Pale Nova “In Your Direction”
Speedsuit “The Game”
Spurgie Hankins Band “Seagull”
Nixon Black “The Sun Also Rises”
Baked Shrimp “NO2-4U”
Nola Bean “Buggaboo”
Hybrid Soul Project “It’s A Love Go-Go Set”

hour three
Mike Pushkin “Wrecking Ball”
David Mayfield Parade “Blue Skies Again”
Diablo Blues Band “Hell To Pay”
Mojomatic “Sinner’s Prayer”
Keneally Bendian and Lund “Pride Is A Sin”
Morglbl “Brutal Romance” ”
John The Conqueror “She Said”
The Big Bad “See You In The Shadows”
Steve Clever and Kenneth Starcher “Carnival Ride”
Harper and the Midwest Kind “Love = Peace = Freedom”
Southern Culture On The Skids “King of the Mountain”
John Lancaster “Something To Fade Into”
Mother’s Nature “Stand Back”

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, like all of our non-RFC music speciality shows, is an encore of last week’s show, to make up for the replay disruptions from our anniversary celebrations.

 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.

If you’ve been reading PopCult for the last few days, you may know that I had an MG flare up near the end of last week’s big Anniversary event, so the art-making fingers aren’t cooperating with the rest of me.

Because of that, this week we bring you a rejected variant of a piece I ran in this space over ten years ago. It’s a digital abstract that I think evokes a mid-century, free jazz feeling, like it’d be right at home on the wall of a beatnik hangout or on the cover of a Modern Jazz album. If you strain your imagination you might be able to hear the bongos or smell the cheap incense.

I call it, “Hipster Art.”

Aren’t you glad I rescued it from the slush pile?

You don’t have to answer that.

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 last week’s 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.

Because the RFC marathon ate up all the weekend replay dates, this week, except for Radio Free Charleston, all of our musical specialty shows will give you a second chance to hear the shows that debuted last week, during PopCult’s anniversary week.

At 8 PM you can hear a classic episode of The Comedy Vault devoted to the conceptual comedy of The Firesign Theater.

Tonight at 9 PM we do not have a Monday Marathon. In its place we bring our new Monday night line-up feature 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.

Fans of the marathon shouldn’t go into morning.  Next weekend sees the beginning of The Sunday Marathon, which will allow us to feature our marathons in the daylight hours.

I don’t like to repeat the videos I post here in Sunday Evening Video very often, but this one has become an annual tradition and hardly anybody reads the blog on Labor Day weekend anyway, so here goes, for the sixth time.

If you are of a certain age, Labor Day seems synonymous with The Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon, which the famed comedian hosted for almost sixty years.

The telethon is gone, as is Jerry, but MDA (the Muscular Dystrophy Association) maintains a YouTube page where they still post highlights from the vaults.

Above you see a playlist with over a hundred videos of musical legends like Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, B.B. King, Diana Ross, Ray Charles, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Toni Basil and many others. Best of all, you can watch these clips without sitting through four hours of corporate spokespeople droning on in a monotone about how much they care about the kids. I mean, no offense to the guy from 7 11, but I’m pretty sure they play those parts on an endless loop in hell. Above you see the good stuff, the cream of the crop.

Seriously, there are some gems in there like Duran Duran, MC Hammer and Charo. There’s lots of Charo. Lots of MC Hammer, too, now that I think about it.

Enjoy!

Sometimes we get really lucky with our chronological presentation of classic episodes of Radio Free Charleston. For instance, this weekend is the 36th anniversary of Radio Free Charleston as a thing, and this past week saw the 20th anniversary of PopCult, which is the home of RFC now, and the next show up in our rotation was a milestone episode that looked back at the history of the video show.

It’s sorta like kismet, or sumthin’.

This week we’re going back to March, 2012 for episode 150 of Radio Free Charleston. “Black Shirt” which was a celebration of LiveMix Studio, our first production partner without whom Radio Free Charleston would not exist. LiveMix is long gone now, but in this episode, we revisited some of the incredible performances and spoke with some of the musicians who helped make our first 150 episodes so special.

This is an extra-long compilation show, and it’s filled with local legends like Raymond Wallace, Whistlepunk 2.0, The Nanker Phelge, The Ghosts of Now, The Feast of Stephen, Sasha Colete and Mrs. PopCulteer, Mel Larch. It’s a good ‘un, and it reminds us how much we miss LiveMix Studio.

You can find the original production notes HERE.

The PopCult Toybox

We have a quick photo review for you today of a great new figure from our friends at Vintage Toys and Trains and White Elephant Toyz.

A couple of years ago when Steve Stovall (of VT&T and Kentuckiana GI Joe Toy Expo fame) and Jason from White Elephant Toyz teamed up to realize Steve’s longtime dream of reviving the late 1970s Super Joe action figure, the idea of it being successful enough for them to revive his arch enemy, Gor: The King of the Terrons, was just a pipe dream.

However, the Super Joe Unlimited revival was successful enough to not only bring down the wrath of Hasbro, causing them to change the name to Adventure Command and Astro Command, but also to invest in the considerable tooling required to make a new incarnation of King Gor.

Like the Adventure Command figures, the newly-rechristened “Gargon” is not an exact reproduction. The construction is vastly superior, he’s a bit bigger, and he lacks the light-up function that won’t be missed by many. I think he has a couple of added points of articulation at the wrists, too.

Gargon is available in the same shade of green as the original Gor, but he’s also been made in a very limited Glow-In-The-Dark version, with accessories that glow as well. You may be able to snag one of the glowing Gargons if you act fast, but the original color is pretty cool by itself.

Seriously this would look right at home on a shelf filled with collectible vinyl monster toys. These are a godsend for collectors of the original Super Joe toy line, but they are so freaking cool that, even for someone like me who grew up before that line hit, they are well worth collecting on their own. I’m not going out on a limb to say that Adventure Command is a huge improvement over the Super Joe line, which may be the most fragile action figure line in history.  These new figures are built like a tank.

I’ve had these guys a couple of weeks, but things have been so hectic that I just had time to de-box them and take some pics yesterday. Because I don’t have the fancy lighting necessary, I faked the glow while editing the photos. However, later in the evening, I had left this guy under the lightbox, and when I turned it off, the glow effect was striking.

You can order Gargon at White Elephant Toyz or get one from Steve’s eBay store. There are also a limited supply at a few other online sellers, or if you go to JoeLanta, Steve will have them for sale there.

Check this guy out, he’s really cool…

Fresh out of the box, this is one impressive figure, with great sculpting and terrific color.

Just look at that face.

The extremely cool accessories are really sharp-looking.

“Ya see, foist I shoots him, thens I beats the hell outta him wit’ dis club!”

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The AIR FRIDAY!

Friday afternoon both of our Friday music specialty shows devote themselves to special themes to close out PopCult’s anniversary week.. Mel Larch’s MIRRORBALL and Sydney Fileen’s Sydney’s Big Electric Cat return with new episodes.  The AIR is PopCult‘s sister radio station. You can hear our shows on The AIR website, or just click on the embedded player found elsewhere on this page.

Friday at 2 PM on The AIR, we have a new episode of MIRRORBALL where Mel Larch presents Disco songs about travelling, or rather, transportation.  It’s trains, planes and automobiles…not necessarily in that order…making their way to the danceflor.

Don’t believe us? Check out the playlist.,,

MIRRORBALL 118

Rose Royce “Car Wash”
Hemnlock “Drive Me Crazy”
JBs “Hot Pants Road”
Hot Chocolate “Heaven Is In the Back Seat of my Cadillac”
Donna Summer “Highway Runner”
Celi Bee “Fly Me On The Wings of Love”
A. Chrome “Fly On UFO”
Rhythm Heritage “Gonna Fly Now”
ELO “Last Train To London”
Gap Band “Party Train”
The O’Jays “Love Train”

You can hear MIRRORBALL every Friday at 2 PM, with replays Sunday night at 11 PM and throughout the following week Monday at 9 AM and Tuesday at 1 PM plus there’s a mini-marathon that includes the latest episode Saturday nights at 9 PM

At 3 PM, Sydney Fileen graces us with a terrific new episode of Sydney’s Big Electric Cat that salutes Echo and The Bunnymen, one of the major bands to come out of Liverpool’s New Wave scene in the late 1970s.

The dominant band in Mersey was The Crucial Three. Its three members would all go on to become major figures in British New Wave in the 1980s:  Julian Cope formed The Teardrop Explodes; Pete Wylie became the leader of various bands with “WAH” in the name; And Ian McCulloch joined up with Will Sergeant Les Pattinson and later, Peter DeFrietas to form Echo and The Bunnymen.

Over the course of this week’s show, sydney brings you the highlights of the band’s output from their beginning up to their self-titled 1987 album, which was the last with their drummer, Peter, before his tragic death in 1989.

Check out the playlist..

BEC 131

Echo and The Bunnymen

“Pictures On My Wall”
“All That Jazz”
“Going Up”
“Monkeys”
“Rescue”
“Crocodiles”
“Read It In Books”
“The Puppet”
“A Promise”
“Broke My Neck”
“Heaven Up Here:”
“Over The Wall”
“The Subject”
“The Killing Moon (All Night Version)”
“Silver”
“Crystal Days”
“Ocean Rain”
“Nocturnal Me”
“The Cutter”
“The Back of Love”
“Bring On The Dancing Horses”
“Bedbugs and Ballyhoo”
“Porcupine”
“People Are Strange”
“The Disease”
“Seven Seas”
“Lips Like Sugar”
“The Killing Moon”

Sydney’s Big Electric Cat is produced at Haversham Recording Institute in London, and can be heard every Friday at 3 PM, with replays  Monday at 7 AM, Tuesday at 8 PM, Wednesday at Noon and Thursday at 10 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Classic episodes can be heard Sunday morning at 10 AM.

Saturday at Noon The AIR will present 36 hours of Radio Free Charleston to celebrate the 36 years since RFC debuted on WVNS radio over Labor Day Weekend in 1989.  Because this will wipe out many of the regular replays of our musical specialty shows, next week we will encore all of them in their regular timeslots.

The PopCulteer
August 29, 2025

For the PopCulteer that starts to wind up our 20th anniversary week, we are going to bring you a photo essay of a place that’s also celebrating an anniversary or two.  I’m talking a really cool place that opened to the public twenty years ago, The American Sign Museum in Cinncinnati.

You might have noticed that this is our third photo essay devoted to a museum in Cinncinnati in the last week. That’s because we actually went to them all on the same day.

I’d decided that, for my birthday this year, I wanted to take a fun trip to a place we really hadn’t visited before. Now, we’d gone to Cinncinnati for a Queen City Beautiful Dolls Club show a few years ago, but we didn’t venture into the city proper.

And for years, I’ve wanted to visit The American Sign Museum, and Mel really wanted to see The Lucky Cat Museum…and since we were in the area and we both always wanted to see the historic Cinncinnati Union Terminal, we decided to go the weekend before my birthday, and hit all three attractions on the same day.

That was on a Friday, and then Saturday we went randomly shopping and found places that definitely merit a return visit.

Jungle Jim’s, I’m talking about you.

Actually, all the museums merit return visits, and the next time we go, we might do so fully as civilians. I’m trying to break the habit of habitually taking way too many photos for the blog and not basking in the full experience of these cool places. As it was, this was one of the most fun trips we’ve taken…and we specialize in taking fun trips, so that’s saying something.

But share pictures with you I will. Our first stop was The American Sign Museum, and it’s an overwhelming immersive experience of nostalgia, art, craftsmanship, advertising history, and everything popular culture has to offer.

Much of the museum is a neon wonderland, but they also have lots of land-marking statuary, print poster art, folk art and clever sleight-of-sign.

The phrase “sensory overload” is appropriate here. It is a mind-blowing experience. The museum offers a guided tour that takes almost two hours, but we chose to just wander aimlessly for our first visit, and the effect was not unlike that of being a hyperactive kid in a candy store.

You can find full details about how you can plan your visit at their website, and get directions all all the other useful information you need so you can go take in this incredible museum. You really need to see this in person. These photos barely scratch the surface.

Now, let’s have the photos do the talking…

As you drive down Monmouth Avenue, you can tell you’re getting close when you see some…signs.

Most of the signage is indoors, but some of it is so huge it has to live in the parking lot, or on the side of the building.

When you walk in, the glow of the neon permeates your world.

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Tucked away in an arts incubator in Cinncinnati is a wonderful little shrine to the Maneki-neko.

In case you don’t know, that’s the Lucky Cat, the cute little waving kitties you see in Asian restaurants and markets. When we were in Cinncinnati a few weeks ago, we stopped into a place Mel has wanted to visit for years…The Lucky Cat Museum.

The Lucky Cat Museum is a small, appointment-only collection of thousands of Lucky Cats. It’s an absolute treat for fans of Japanese art and culture, Asian mythology and kitty cats in general. They even had some Kaiju Kitties to entertain yours truly.

Let me quote from their website:

The Lucky Cat Museum is the passion project of Micha Robertson and her husband Jaime. They moved to Cincinnati, Ohio from Oklahoma in 2001. Micha had always collected cat ephemera and Japanese and Asian art, but hadn’t been able to find any Lucky Cats in Oklahoma. She received her first Neko from her sister, Brenna (purchased from Tokyo Foods) and the second from the Cheviot Goodwill. Coincidentally, she and Brenna went to an anime/manga convention in California in late 2001, where she became a beta tester for Rinkya, one of the very first US companies to offer bidding services on Yahoo Japan Auctions. This opened the fortune feline floodgates, as it were, and the collection continues to grow.

In 2012, Micha’s friend Eva Clarke asked if she would be interested in sharing a space with her and Jenn Sczur at the Essex Art Studios. At the same time, the room at home that hadn’t quite become totally overwhelmed with the collection needed to be emptied for a family member. Eva and Jenn were cool with the idea of moving the collection into Micha’s third of the space. Cappel’s, her employer, provided many glass and acrylic display cases to get things organized.

In 2016, a space on the first floor of the Essex became available. It featured carpet, air-conditioning and complete walls (all things absent from the first space). The Museum moved downstairs and reopened with regular hours.

Micha’s collection is stunning in size and scope. As a fellow collector of cool stuff, I could only nod and smile with familiarity as she described how she’s pursued her obsession.

The Essex Art Studios is brimming with artists and is cool enough to merit a return visit the next time we go to Cinncinnati, but the Lucky Cat Museum is just a gem of pure happiness, nestled among the Walnut Hills neighborhood.

We’re just going to bring you a few photos. If you want to see the whole collection, you’ll just have to visit there yourself.   Contact them through the website ahead of time. The museum is open by appointment only, and admission is limited to six people at a time.  It’s a cozy space.

The variety of Maneki Neko is mind-blowing

Even the many minor differences between the traditional lucky cats is a revelation.

Of course, with some styles there’s strength in numbers.

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