It's a very, very sad day indeed. Billy Thorpe , the one man we all thought was invincible, has gone in his sleep . That's Thorpie on the right in the photo, alongside his best guitar foil, Lobby Lloyd. I only met Thorpe the once. He toured with some God-awful Rock & Roll Symphony package. The same show saw Alice Cooper, Roger Daltrey, Paul Rodgers, Peter Frampton and a few others, so my ma and step pa asked if I could go and get them some autographs - Thorpe for my ma, Rodgers for the step pa. Down to the hotel I went. Thorpe was one of the nicest of all the famous people I met, albeit briefly. I got the signatures and asked for two, one for me, one for my ma. He looked at me and said, "Really?" "Yep," I replied, "we grew up with your music all over the house. My mum loves you." With that he roared with laughter, turned to Rodgers and said, "See! No-one says that to you mate!" I couldn't help but laugh. He signed the cards and sa

Robert Altman Michelangelo Antonioni Ingmar Bergman Richard Brooks Clarence Brown Tim Burton Jane Campion John Cassavetes Charles Chaplin Cecil B. De Mille Brian De Palma Stanley Donen Blake Edwards Federico Fellini John Frankenheimer D.W. Griffith Howard Hawks Alfred Hitchcock James Ivory Norman Jewison Buster Keaton Stanley Kramer Stanley Kubrick Akira Kurosawa Gregory La Cava Fritz Lang Spike Lee Mervyn LeRoy Joshua Logan Ernst Lubitsch Sidney Lumet David Lynch Terrence Malick Rouben Mamoulian Michael Mann Paul Mazursky F.W. Murnau Alan J. Pakula Sam Peckinpah Arthur Penn Michael Powell Otto Preminger Jean Renoir Herbert Ross Robert Rossen Ridley Scott George Sidney Francois Truffaut W.S. Van Dyke King Vidor Josef von Sternberg Peter Weir Orson Welles Jane Alexander Judith Anderson Jean Arthur Lauren Bacall Lucille Ball Tallulah Bankhead Brigitte Bardot Jacqueline Bisset Beulah Bondi Glenn Close Doris Day Catherine Deneuve Marlene Dietrich Irene Dunne Mia Farrow Greta Garbo Ava Gard

Last night was the second run of the new BBQ and all went swimmingly. A few no-shows - Stevie was ill (although Tobias did wonder if Stevie was "ill or Stevie-ill", to which I said, "Well he says he's ill...") and Mich decided to fly to Perth at the last minute to attend a family funeral. Still I did manage to ring and abuse her for not getting her priorities right. Loads of kidlets running around, including two who seemed hell bent on beating the living suitcase out of a wall, good on 'em too, just means they'd have slept well when they got home. Now here was the fun. As usual Chadwick was an hour late. Now Chadwick gets upset if anyone starts cooking without him and one phone call saying that Peter was about to fire up the bbq and start cooking (exact words: "Mate, a wog is about to start using the BBQ and he says he has heaps of garlic.") got Lil' Chad over quick smart. He's had the irrits for a while claiming that the invite I s

Recently I was asked a series of questions about Ross Andru on a previous post . Said person asked for answers, so here we go. "First, what about that story about Bill Everett being, well, let's say, ornery, inking that first Defenders story over Andru? He was so pissed over the sketchiness of the pencils that he inked them literally instead of, essentially, re-rendering the pencil art. "And if the pencils were too hard for Everett to ink, then what about that Spider-Man story a couple of years earlier (showed up, IIRC, in Marvel Super-Heroes???) IIRC, those inks were, well, normal, let's say. (Must say I somewhat liked the Defenders art....)" I've pointed this very topic out many times in emails, letters and even in the book itself . It wasn't that the pencils were too hard to ink, it's just that Everett decided to ink everything on the page. By all account what happened was that Everett was indeed angry about being assigned Andru as his penciler. he

Have to laugh. Naylor House , the building I work in (day job), has had a new little coffee shop open up earlier this year. It was put there to service the entire building (said shop is located in the lobby) and I think that, over time, it'll be a success. Moderate, not roaring. In the meantime, in a great show of goodwill, said shop is giving away free cups of coffee to the building's tenants for the week. I went and bought a bottle of Coke Zero yesterday (I don't even drink the crap - it's still in the fridge here) because I think that any shop that needs to give stuff away at such an early stage needs the money. However there's a pile of freeloaders from Centerlink (same building, different floor) who have been swamping the shop and cashing in. Typical. I can't work out just what it is that they do in their offices though. If they're not out the front of the building giving themselves lung cancer while they smoke like thirty bushfires they're hangi

So Simon Goodwin has been named as the Adel aide footballer who gambled during the season. There's now calls for a life ban and a minimum of $100,000 in fines, all for betting on football games that didn't involve his own club. Surely it's a bit of a joke? Not to the Official Port Adelaide Club Historian Michelangelo Rucci who'd be having a field day with this - indeed he's made sure that it's been front page news for the past couple of days. Rucci, never one to allow his bias to prevent him from bashing the Crows , is convinced that this is the most evil of crimes that a footballer can commit. Let's look at it objectively, and this is what amazes me. According to both the AFL, and Rucci for that matter, if you're a player and you bet on a football game you can get banned for life and a $100,000 fine. However an AFL footballer can do any of the following without any fear of censure from the either the AFL or Rucci (remembering that both a current and

SUPER-STAR HOLIDAY SPECIAL This is another one of those 'only in Australia' comic books. Seriously. It's one of the most impressive books you're likely to find for one brilliant reason - the comic is the same size as a standard original art page. Thus the pages in here, and the bulk of them are black and white, are as close to the original art as you're likely to see, and when you see what's in the book, well you'll understand why copies of this sucker get snapped up a fair bit. The book reprints all of the contents from DC Special #21, with some added extras. Inside you have, in order: Star Light, Star Bright...Farthest Star I See Tonight! by Paul Levitz, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez & Dick Giordano (DC Special Series 21) The Fawn and the Star by Michael Fleisher, Dick Ayers & Romeo Tanghal (DC Special Series 21) They Call Him Hawkman by Paul Levitz & Joe Kubert (Detective Comics 500) Who Haunts This House? by Denny O'Neil, Joe Staton & Frank

Courtesy of Tim . Jeez! Keep 'em coming. We managed to see Red Zeppelin last night - he looked damned impressive at night, flying out over the ocean. Snapped a couple of shots but sadly they just didn't come out.

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews and testimonials, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper. Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest. ------------------------ ALEX TOTH This one might need some explaining. Click on either image for a larger view. During the process of writing the book Mike Esposito informed me how Ross Andru had been heavily influenced by Alex Toth. He went further and told me how the duo had managed to get Toth to draw a cover for them, it was either 3-

You don't often see these floating above Adelaide. I'm figuring that it got here a tad early - the Clipsal 500 is still a fortnight away guys... Still it was funny seeing it blowing about in the breeze. Nice ad. You can imagine if that flew over a city in America the sewers would be backed up from all the toilets flushing at once. If anyone can be bothered knock up a funny logo for the sign and send it over and I'll post the results.

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews and testimonials, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper. Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest. ------------------------ SUPERMAN vs. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN The following is an article that grew out of a chapter of the book. With everything in this book, the quest for information was almost never-ending. In order to do both Ross and Mike justice, I had to dig and dig deep. What started as a simple chapter ended up as an article all o

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews and testimonials, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper. Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest. ------------------------ NIC CUTI A veteran of the comic book industry, Nic Cuti is the co-creator of E-MAN, along with artist Joe Staton. Nic has worked for the likes of Charlton, Warren, DC and more. He’s written, edited and drawn countless stories during his career, and is probably best known for his work on the many Warren horror books

GHOST RIDER Normally I don't bother with movie reviews, but as I've pointed out if it's sent to us then I'll review it. So as we were given a ticket to the preview of Ghost Rider tonight I feel obliged to review it. I walked into the movie expecting it to be fairly poor. It's not that I didn't have high hopes for the flick - I mean I've been waiting for this film since I first picked up a copy of Ghost Rider back in 1979 (issue #34 - which I'm going to get Don Perlin to recreate the cover to in a month or so) and I've been a fan of the character ever since then. And why not? The comic had motorbikes, demons, bad guys, damsels in distress - it had the works! Every little boys dream come to life. Later I discovered that the true Ghost Rider was a co-creation of Dick Ayers and had nothing to do with ole Zarathos (as I later discovered his name was). Still the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider was the first one I saw and the best for me. The movie itself ha

What is it with Government departments and the muzak they select to entertain us all while we're on hold? I've been sitting here listening to the same acoustic guitar piece being played on what must be an endless loop for a good twenty minutes now. It's worse than listening to Jimmy Page playing his bloody awful same two chords over and over (as he did on numerous acoustic 'tunes', most of which he stole from Bert Jansch anyway). I'm suspecting that the choice of muzak is designed to make the caller hang up in despair and not phone back. My God, it's almost working...

Lock up your ferrets. Click the image for a better look. And I promise I will play both Paralyzed by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Love Me by The Phantom , at full volume. Make sure you're ready for bleeding ears.

Because there's more to life than sitting down and taking abuse gracefully. Go ahead, click on the images for the larger view - hopefully it'll be worth it. This is why I love South Australia - because there's a postcard around every corner. We've finally got a digital camera and the software to do what we want a camera to do (although I now need a tripod). One of the things that has always fascinated me are panoramic photos. I love them! 360% shots just thrill me no end, so when I discovered that this camera can take such photos, albeit in a round about way, I wanted to try it out. For me the locations were obvious - two of my all time favourite places to relax and regain my focus in and around Adelaide. The first is Waterfall Gully. A well known spot the location always reminds me of something out a book on 19th century India or South Africa, not overly surprising as it was designed and built at around that time. The place is relaxing, it has a halfway decent eater

Well the book is now out and on the shelves (you can order it from Amazon using the link on the side of this page). I'm not exactly sure as to the reasons why but a large portion of the text wasn't used. That includes some great interviews, so rather than lose them completely I've decided to run them here over the coming months as a companion piece to the book itself so you can see all of the great stuff that couldn't be fit into the book proper. Feel free to print these interviews out and place them in your book. Otherwise enjoy these little pieces and then run out and buy a copy of the book so you can read the rest. ------------------------ JOHN ROMITA John Romita Senior started drawing after spending a year in commercial art. His first jobs were for Stan Lee's Atlas group in 1949. Romita drew mostly horror and romance stories, but also several war, western and crime features for Western Publishing. After the folding of Atlas, he went to National, where he did ano