JULY 11-12 GARAGE SALE UPDATE #1

My second Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sale of the summer will take place Friday, July 11 and Saturday, July 12 at 840 Damon Drive in Medina, Ohio. The sale hours are 9 am to noon on each of the two days. As always, there will thousands upon thousands of comic books and other items for sale at bargain prices.

The comic book and magazines are filling up nicely. The hardcover and trade paperback boxes are already full. This next garage sale will offer a dozen or so boxed sets of non-sports card series and a whole bunch of mass market paperbacks that haven’t been offered at my previous garage sales.  Time permitting, I’ll put together another dozen $5 mystery boxes.

I’m continuing to uncover cool stuff as I go through long unopened boxes in preparation for my garage sale. In the category of “Tony is keeping these for now,” I excavated a long box containing Batman #101-354. I also found the complete run of Hawkman from the Silver Age of Comics. Whenever I decide I can part with these, I’ll most likely sell them through an auction house. In the case of Hawkman, that will probably be this summer.

I found what I think is the first fifty issues or so of Hellblazer, the DC/Vertigo series that starred John Constantine, scheduled to star in his own live-action TV series. After I consider the likely impact of the series on the value of these comics, I’ll probably put the earliest issues in my “specially priced comics” boxes. Visitors to my next sale will find a near complete run of the 1970s Shazam in those boxes.

I’ve been putting a lot of great comic books in my quarter boxes, but you’ll have to come to the garage sale to learn what they are. The same for the magazine boxes which now include an amazing array of comics-oriented magazines. To make room for them, I pulled out all the issues of People I had for sale.

Weather permitting, I’ll have a “free stuff” table just outside my garage. It’ll have those issues of People as well as a pile of equally free stuffed animals.

I placed announcements of the garage sale on Craig’s List and took out my usual classified ad in The [Medina] Gazette. Outside of some fine tuning, I’m pretty much good to go.

Keep watching the bloggy thing for more garage sale updates. I’ll post them when and if I have more information to share.

© 2014 Tony Isabella

INDEPENDENCE DAY 2014

I have never been more concerned for the United States of America than I am on this Independence Day. While I will elaborate on this theme in the weeks and months to come, the sum of all my fears can be best expressed in one sentence:

We are in danger of losing our independence.

The right-wing judges of the Supreme Court of the United States are granting corporations crushing power over citizens. Over the past several months, they have dealt crippling blows to women’s health care, voting rights, individual freedom of speech, our freedom from religion and so much more. As a friend pointed out, in a ridiculous system that allows these judges to hold their positions for life, this is why elections matter.

The corrupting influence of the rich and powerful on our government has never been more open. It’s why we can’t have sensible gun laws. It’s why we can’t have a living minimum wage. It’s why woman aren’t paid the same as men or have access to the same quality of health care as men. It’s why equal rights for all Americans has not yet been achieved. And so much more.

Elections matter. So I am asking you to vote in every election and to vote against every right-wing candidate or issue. Because I have come to believe that the only way for our country to remain free, the only way for us to thrive, is if we make those who support the odious positions of the right unelectable.

Am I going to tell you the candidates and positions of the left are so much better that they will usher in a Golden Age for the United States of America? Of course not.

Am I going to tell you the candidates and positions of the left are better enough to give us a fighting chance? Yes.

There was a time when conservatives were just that...conservative. They could be thoughtful without being knee-jerk ideologues. They could change their positions when persuaded by reason or pressing need. They could work with liberals to benefit the country.  They saw value in negotiation and transparency. They didn’t try to game the system to achieve partisan goals that were often injurious to the citizenry. They were worthy of respect.

There was a time when “liberal” was not an angry insult. When the word stood for generosity and progressive ideas, when that political designation moved our nation forward with the assistance of those who didn’t always subscribe to that generosity or those progressive ideas but who stood ready to help shape those ideas with their own insights.  There was a time when both sides seemed to honestly want the best for the country and its citizens.

Elections matter. Your vote matters, even more so when the forces of the right try to take it from you. Especially when the forces of the right try to take it from you.

There is no room for bigotry or ignorance in this country. There is no room for laws that allow religions, any religions, the slightest power over those who don’t embrace their particular religion or who embrace no religion whatsoever.

Please vote in every election. Please vote against the right. Not because the left has all the answers, but because the right proves day in and day out that it doesn’t have any of the answers.

If the progressive left regains control of this country, hold it to those same demanding standards that I have asked you hold the right to. Don’t let the politicians ever feel secure in their jobs unless they are actually doing those jobs well.

Elections matter...and not because the rich and the powerful throw billions of dollars into them.

Elections matter...and not because there are those who try to sway your vote with bigotry, fear and ignorance.

Elections matter...because elections are how the people can change the future of our country for the better.

Elections matter...because people matter more than corporations or religions or ideologues.

Elections matter because people matter.

© 2014 Tony Isabella

“THOSE CREEPS AT FAIR!”

This is a sad memory from either a Chicago Comic-Con or a San Diego Comic-Con in the late 1990s.  I can’t remember which. It involves two friends of mine who I love the way you only love someone who’s been a part of your life for close to half-a-century.

The memory exploded into my mind while I was going through boxes of stuff for my next Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sale. I pulled out a long-forgotten copy of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly by Peter Hard and Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting [Seven Stories Press; 2003]. The book did a terrific job setting the record straight on O’Reilly’s bogus claim to being a non-partisan pundit. However, though this book triggered my sad memory, the actual cause of the event I found myself recalling was an earlier FAIR book.

FAIR’s The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error : Over 100 Outrageously False and Foolish Statements from America's Most Powerful Radio and TV was published in 1995. Limbaugh might be the darling of the ridiculous right, but the distance between him and the truth is vast. FAIR nailed him on his falsehood and foolishness in magnificent fashion. I was impressed.

I happened to mention the book to the two friends and was startled when their mutual response was “Those creeps at FAIR!” One of the friends was a conservative, but the kind of conservative who does not foam at the mouth. The other was whatever would get a rise out of whoever was around him and drive them away.

I’m not going to mince words. Limbaugh is a terrible human being. He’s a bully and a liar. He is not a conservative as the word was once defined. He’s a vicious hate-monger. To think that my friend would champion him - while not offering the slightest evidence that FAIR’s reporting was inaccurate - depressed me then as it depresses me today.

Are conservatives so morally weak they will take the side of anyone who claims to be a conservative? Even when they know that someone is as horrible as Limbaugh? Is this why, as a nation, we can’t have nice things?

The other friend? Sadly, he is emotionally and mentally unstable. His rants against liberals and the government border on insanity, especially since that government and its liberal policies are all that keep him alive. If I could help him out of the dark world he has embraced, I would. But I can’t.

I’m glad I can still exchange friendly e-mails with the first guy. Obviously, we don’t talk politics. We have many interests in common and that’s what we discuss. I wish we could talk face-to-face on a regular basis - he’s a couple states away - but my door is open to him and will always be open to him.

My door’s open to the other guy as well. He just can’t realize that because of the walls of bitterness and self-loathing he has built around himself.  If I were a praying man, I’d pray for him.  As it is, I can only hope the universe leads him to a happier place while he’s still alive.

If you know and love someone for nearly half a century, there are bound to be good memories and not-so-good memories. I cherish the good memories and strive to forget the not-so-good ones. Writing about the latter helps put the not-so-good memories to rest.

I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2014 Tony Isabella

ONLINE SALES UPDATE

UPDATE! My next online Vast Accumulation of Stuff sale will be posted on Tuesday, July 8. I'm moving my nigh-weekly online sales from Friday to Tuesday to make it easier on my nigh-weekly schedule of Friday and Saturday garage sales. I've already put aside a terrific selection of items for this next online sale, so be sure to come back on Tuesday to see what's available.

TONY'S TIPS #62

This week in TONY'S TIPS at Tales of Wonder...The Art of Neil Gaiman, Family Ties (an Alaskan crime drama) and the pulp adventures of Cap Fury!

ON THE ROAD

My convention schedule is deliberately light this year because of all the other stuff I have going on in my life. I’m hoping to do at least one convention a month in 2015, but we’ll talk about that a few paragraphs down the line.

PulpFest 2014 is the first of the three conventions I’ll be at this year. The convention starts Thursday evening, August 7, and runs to Sunday noon, August 10. It’s held at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Columbus, Ohio. The hotel is one of my favorite convention hotels and the area around the convention rates high on my list as well.

From the convention website:

At PulpFest, you’ll find science-fiction books and magazines, detective and adventure pulps, westerns, original cover art and interior illustrations, stacks of digest magazines, vintage paperbacks and comic books, unique films, and much, much more! You’ll be entertained and informed by countless presentations and panels featuring leading pop-culture experts. You’ll see old pals and meet new friends.

I’m not a guest of PulpFest. I attend the convention on my own dime so I can hang out with friends I never see anywhere else but at the convention. I will not be appearing on any panels and I won’t have a table. I will be chagrined because I have not written the sure-to-be-terrific pulp adventure novel I discussed with a publisher at PulpFest 2013. However, the novel is near the top of my bucket list of things I want to write before I kick the bucket.

There will be some creators and publishers with credentials in both pulps and comics: Anthony Tollin, Will Murray, Rob Fortier and Rob Davis. They are fine fellows all.

While I will be spending a lot of time at PulpFest, I would love to get away from the show for a few hours here and there to hang out with Columbus comics people. If you’d like to get together with me, e-mail me and we’ll set something up.

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I’ll also be at Wizard World Ohio Comic-Con from Friday, October 31 through Sunday, November 2. The con will be at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. The show hours are Friday 3 to 8 pm, Saturday 10 am to 7 pm and Sunday 11 am to 5 pm. What can I say? I really like going to Columbus.

At this writing, the event’s guest list is about half TV and movie folks and half comics folks. I’m not scheduled to be on any panels, but I will have a table in Artist Alley. I’ll have copies of 1000 Comic Books You Must Read, a box of other Isabella-written comics and copies of some of my original scripts. I’m happy to sign stuff written by me whether you bought it from me or not. However, I no longer sign non-comics Black Lightning items for which DC has not paid me in full...and that would be all of them. I also don’t sign DC-licensed books of comics history on account of the company and its stooges lie...a lot. Except for those two things, I expect you will find me a friendly, occasionally witty commentator on all sorts of subjects.

I’m always happy to talk to creators and publishers about working with them. If you’d like to set up something in advance of Wizard World Ohio, e-mail me and we’ll make it happen. I’ll be staying at the nearby Drury Inn during the convention.

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The Akron Comicon is my third and final scheduled appearance of the year. It’ll be Saturday and Sunday, November 8-9, at the University of Akron’s Quaker Station. The hours are Saturday 10 am to 6 pm and Sunday 11 am to 5 pm. The guest list for this comics-driven event includes Tom Batiuk, Mike W. Barr, Gerry Conway, Jose Delbo, Graham Nolan, Joe Rubenstein, Joe Staton and Golden Age of Comics artist Allen Bellman.

I’ll be at the convention both days. I’m not currently scheduled to appear on any panels, but I will have a table from which I will be selling Isabella stuff and some choice items from my garage sales. As always, if you want to get together with me outside the hours of the convention, you can e-mail me to set something up.

Because Medina is not far from Akron, I don’t plan on staying in Akron on Saturday night. That could change depending on what else is going on with the schedule or the convention.

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Looking ahead to 2015, I’d like to make more convention appearances as well as at libraries, schools and stores. That’s in addition to the three events I want to do on my own dime: The East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention, G-Fest and PulpFest 2015.

If convention promoters want me at their events, they will need to cover my hotel and travel expenses, provide some sort of per diem to cover meals and set me up with a booth/table from which I can sell stuff. As long as the details are discussed in advance, I’d be happy to appear on panels.

Libraries, schools and stores also have to provide hotel and travel expenses. Other details can be discussed on a per appearance basis.

Every now and then, a college contacts me to teach comics history or comics writing. I confess I like the idea, but these talks have yet to go beyond the initial discussions.

Whenever I agree to appear at a convention or anywhere else, I will promote my appearance in the myriad venues available to me.  Keep reading the bloggy thing for such announcements.

That’s all for today. I’ll be back soon with more stuff.

© 2014 Tony Isabella

TUESDAY WITH TONY

My blogging of bloggy things will be spotty this month. I’m looking ahead at several paying gigs, a plethora of medical appointments, six days of garage sales, a couple demanding household projects and a whole list of things I should have done before July.  I’m going to be a busy geezer this month.

Whenever I post something like the above, I get bombarded with all kinds of questions. I’m going to try to answer them today, hoping against hope I won’t have to answer them several more times before the end of the month.

What are those paying gigs?

Some of them are for what I call “My Girlfriend from Canada Job.” I work as an occasional assistant and ghost-writer for a smallish number of syndicated cartoonists. So, like that friend of yours who swears he has a gorgeous girlfriend in Canada who can’t come here so that you can meet her, I have this job I can’t tell you about. That’s how my clients prefer it and that’s how I’ve come to prefer it as well. Often what appears in the published strips bears little resemblance to what I wrote, which is absolutely the prerogative of the client, and it would be inaccurate for me to claim full credit for it. I knew this was the job when I got into it.

I love working for these cartoonists. The work is challenging and fun. There is a great deal of variety in what I do...and not just because of the different genres of the strips. Sometimes I write a few weeks of a strip to give its creator a break. Sometime I take a basic idea and flesh it out into a full-blown story. Sometimes a cartoonist calls and tell me he’s doing a week’s worth of gags on, let’s say, pudding, and I’ll write as many as I can.

With very rare exception, these cartoonists pay me a decent wage, pay me quickly and treat me with the respect I only infrequently got from the comic-book business. They know it pays to respect someone who helps you make their 365 deadlines a year.

The other gigs? I probably could talk about them, but I prefer to wait until I finish them and until I’m sure they will actually see the light of day.

Are you looking for work?

I’m not so much looking for work as available for work most of the time. If you came to me with a job today, I would have to tell you I couldn’t work on it until August. If I hit a period when I don’t have a paying gig on my desk, then I’ll finally get to write some of my personal projects. Those personal projects have been waiting for me far too long.

If you want to work with me, send me an e-mail. I’ll give you the straight scoop on whether I can write what you want me to write and if the terms of employment are acceptable to me. In general terms, I’m open to anything that’s challenging and/or fun...that promises a relatively calm process and a decent paycheck...and where I will be treated with respect.

What’s up with the medical appointments?

While I think I’m in pretty good health, I need a few examinations and tune-ups here and there. None of this involves anything I would call serious.

However, I do need some serious and expensive dental work. That’s not something I can’t put it off much longer. To pay for that work, I might be putting some Silver Age comic books on the market sooner than I anticipated.

When are your next garage sales?

There will be six days of Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sales in July:

Friday, July 11 (9 am to noon)
Saturday, July 12 (9 am to noon)
Friday, July 18 (9 am to noon)
Saturday, July 19 (9 am to noon)
Friday, July 25 (9 am to noon)
Saturday, July 26 (9 am to noon)

Keep watching the bloggy thing for updates.

What are your household projects?

We are renovating our master bedroom bathroom and have been doing so for several years. I’d really like to see that finished before the end of summer because, if anyone deserves her own bathroom, it is Sainted Wife Barb.

My office and my future reading room are the very avatars of chaos. I need to get them organized. If a certain comics publishing outfit would pay me the money it owes me on its use of a certain electricity-based hero of my creation, I could probably afford to hire a good person to help me complete these projects.

What other things do you have to do?

As I write this, my “Things To Do” list has 272 items on it.  Even if you subtract out my bucket list of things I want to write before I kick the bucket, that still leaves 106 items. If I could get the list down to 200 items or less, I’d consider July a very productive month. Am I dreaming the impossible dream?

To conclude...

My blogging of bloggy things will be sporadic for at least a week or so and perhaps the entire month.  Between now and the resumption of my normal blogging, you can expect to see off-the-cuff pieces on conventions, the comics industry, my online activities, politics and religion. I plan to write these during breaks from my writing gigs and my medical stuff and the garage sales and all the rest.

Hey, now I’m down to 271 items on my “Things To Do” list. Unless I have to add something. Groan.

© 2014 Tony Isabella