Oddly enough, Donovan’s Sunshine Superman is, despite its wonderful, psychedelically-woozy soundscape, a song about renouncing easy pharmaceutical escapes in favour of patience and resilience. Love, it seems, will arrive in its time for the pure of heart. This being Donovan, mind you, his confidence about his virtues is hardly tainted by modesty. As he sings, […]
Read More A Fantastical August 5th 19661. In Which Jack Kirby Has One Of His Least Productive Months For Marvel Comics To focus on Jack Kirby’s astounding productivity for a moment, here’s a brief summary of his new pages published during this very month in 1965. The result, as you’ll see, is thoroughly impressive, although it’s hardly the greatest number of […]
Read More A Fantastical August 4th 1965Rising in the Billboard Top 100 singles during this month in 1964, Jumpin’ Gene Simmons’ Haunted House, a cover of Johnny Fuller’s 1958 hit. A disappointingly limp novelty track, it’s a daft horror tale played entirely for giggles. Very occasionally it achieves its aim. After all, Robert Lee Geddins’ lyric contains some interestingly unsettling moments […]
Read More A Fantastical August 3rd 1964Published this very day in 1963, The Avengers #1. Famously, the title was put together at considerable speed by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee et al to hurriedly take the place on the printing schedule of a disastrously late new Daredevil title. If the resulting debut issue wasn’t consistently polished, it really was an awful […]
Read More A Fantastical August 2nd 1963Telstar by The Tornados, as written & produced by Joe Meek, was released in the UK on August 17th. The archetypal fantastical pop track, it was out in the shops just over a month after NASA had successfully launched the track’s inspiration, the Telstar communication satellite. I wish there was a movie/book/TV or radio show/podcast/comic […]
Read More A Fantastical August 1st 1962The back covers of the New English Library’s shortlived 1972 comic Dracula – which infamously/confusingly didn’t feature Dracula at all – hosted the above ad for the publisher’s substantial line of fantastical novels. The very best in horror, science fiction and fantasy promised the headline, which wasn’t entirely hyperbole. The NEL did indeed have a […]
Read More August 7th 1972 – The New English Library and The Very Best In Horror, Science Fiction And FantasyIn iT #136, Ges Cox painted a picture of the first day of Comicon ’72: “The downstairs suite of the Waverley Hotel is packed with freaks, odd looking people in their Saturday casuals and straight comic collectors, all milling round surrounded by piles of old posters, tables which groan under the weight of old Marvels, […]
Read More August 6th 1972 -Comicon ’72 – How Was It For Them Then?Today in 1972 saw the all-day London Rock and Roll Show at the city’s Wembley Stadium. It was a one-day festival which served to draw the cultural line between those who wanted to appropriate/update ’50s pop culture and those who held to it with all the force of, to use a word used by Jon […]
Read More August 5th 1972 -The London Rock & Roll Show – The Future Refusing To Be BornIt’s August 1972 and you’re trapped in a London suburb. You’re short of the readies for trips beyond the front doorstep and reliant on the TV and radio for injections of the fantastical into your mundane existence. These are your choices, such as they are, for this week. Please be aware that the reviews of […]
Read More August 4th 1972 – The Coming Week’s Fantastical programmes on UK TV and Radio.The above ad for London’s Electric Cinema Club appeared in the first August 1972 edition of the underground magazine iT, or International Times as it had previously been known. As you can see from the movies on show, there was a clear reason for the Club advertising in the countercultural press. For these are selections […]
Read More August 3rd 1972 – The Electric Cinema Club & A Film Show For Comicon ‘72, part 2 of 2
The Almanac Of The Fantastical 