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Tuesday, 20 December 2022

Speak Your Brain! Part 44. How many Marvel honours do you have - and is your tree a fake?

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon
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The Steve Does Comics Megaphone
Image by Tumisu
from Pixabay
The World Cup's over, UK temperatures have soared and we look forward to whatever presents Santa's going to leave around our tree but is that what's on your mind?

I cannot say.

What I can say is that, whatever your concern, here's where you have your chance to mention it.

That's because it's the return of the feature that never fails to send the internet into a tizzy. The one in which the first person to comment gets to choose the topic of the day!

It might be one of many things. Such as arts, carts, marts, darts, smarts, parts, films, flans, plans, books, bagels, cooks, nooks, crooks, ducks, drakes, pixies, rocks, socks, blocks, music, mucous, fairy tales, fairy lights, Fairy Liquid, fairy cakes, Eccles cakes, myth, moths, maths, magic, tragedy, comedy, dromedaries, murder, larders, Ladas, mystery, mayhem, molluscs, Moorcock, May Day, mangoes, bongos, drongoes, bingo, Ringo, Pingu, Ringu, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Doris Day, Marvin Gaye, Marvin the paranoid android, Brookside Close, Ramsay Street, Coronation Street, Albert Square, Scarlet Street, Dead End Street, chickenpox, the Equinox, parallelograms, rhomboids, androids, asteroids, The Good Life, the Next Life, pomegranates, raisins, grapes, currants, blackcurrants, figs, waves, granite, marble, marbles, maples, staples, fables, stables, sofas, eggs, pegs, legs, dregs, moons and supermoons, Supertramp, Supertrams, streetcars, desires, sodas, sausages, eggs, whisky, broth, Bath, baths, Garth Marenghi, Garth Brooks, Garth Crooks, Bruno Brookes, Bruno Mars, Mars Bars, wine bars, flip-flops, flim-flam, flapjacks, backpacks, see-saws, jigsaws, dominoes, draft excluders, blockheads, blackheads, dunderheads, deadheads, webheads, flowerpots, Bill and Ben, Ben and Jerry, Margo and Jerry, Tom and Jerry, flour pots, bread bins, bin bags, body bags, body horror, shoddy horror, doggy bags, bean bags, handbags, glad rags, silk, milk, mink, coal sacks, cola, cocoa, dodos, Dido, Soho, Solo, silos, windows, day-glo, glue, Gloy, Bostik, pancakes, Eccles cakes, Bakewell Tarts, Fabulous Wealthy Tarts, Mr Kipling, Rudyard Kipling, pizzas, pastas, pastors, baking soda, sci-fi, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, sewage, saunas, suet, Tomorrow People, yesterday's men, Forever People, Party People, purple people-eaters, Blobs, Globs, slobs, Sheila Steafel, steeples, Silurians, Sontarans, Sea Devils, sins, suns, sans, sense, sludge, slumps, sumps, pumps, sunshine, slime, soup, sandwiches, servants, Sultanas, Santana, Sultans, grapes, grappling, grippling or sandcastles.

But even that list might not be enough to satisfy readers of the blog that never stops and they may wish to discuss something different altogether.

If so, this is where it'll happen.

If it does happen...

22 comments:

  1. This one was suggested on SDC a couple of weeks ago. I've just seen that Steve put up a post about this in March 2016 but he'll have picked up new readers since then. We're talking Marvel post nominals. How many of the SDC audience have any of these after their name?

    R.F.O. Real Frantic One
    A buyer of at least three Marvel mags/month. I think in the U.K. this might have been changed to three comics/week, otherwise my one weekly (Spider-Man) comic would have been enough for me to pick this one up.

    T.T.B. Titanic True Believer
    A divinely inspired "No-Prize" winner

    Q.N.S. Quote 'Nuff Sayer
    A fearless frantic one who's had a letter printed

    K.O.F. Keeper Of The Flame
    One who recruits a newcomer to Marvel's rollickin' ranks

    P.M.M. Permanent Marvelite Maximus
    Anyone possessing all four of the other titles

    F.F.F. Fearless Front Facer
    An honorary title bestowed for devotion to Marvel and beyond the call of duty

    I have none of these but am proud to call myself an S.S. (Spidophile Supreme), being able to recognise all the villains on a fancy splash page within ASM #94 and SMCW #125 and name five that were missing. Not difficult, admittedly. You can see the page in question at https://www.reddit.com/r/Spiderman/comments/oq3niu/a_daily_spiderman_panel_amazing_spiderman_94/

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  2. DM! Clearly a Marvel Manifesto of our by-gone youth! Magnificent! Merci! Charles

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  3. Colin! Thanks for the Christmas Tune Hit List updates! Also, did we not award you an SDC No Prize???

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  4. Ooo, I might have got an SDC no prize a while back now you mention it Colin

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  5. That comment was from Charlie not me, dangermash!

    If dangermash doesn't mind, we must include a festive question too so:

    Real tree, fake tree...or no tree?

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  6. To answer dangermash's question: I regularly got three Marvel UK comics every week so I'm an RFO.

    To answer my own question: it's no tree for me but I have got a set of 20 multi-coloured LED fairy lights.

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  7. Sorry Colin (and Charlie). It's a plastic tree in our house. I wanted to put it up myself but the wife insisted it goes in the corner of the lounge as usual.

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  8. Charlie, the new UK singles chart (including the Christmas No.1) comes out on Friday, December 23rd so I'll keep you updated on the latest chart happenings!

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  9. Dangermash and Colin, thanks for the topics.

    Dangermash, I think the only Marvel rank I qualify for is RFO, having read several Marvel mags a week.

    I can boast that I too recognised all the villains on that page.

    Colin, I currently have no tree but, if I get one, it'll definitely be a fake one.

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  10. I was certainly an RFO having regularly bought 3 UK weeklies ( MWOM, SMCW and the Avengers) I also bought 3 Marvel US comics each month in the early 70s.

    We have a fake tree. We bought a real tree 3 years ago not realising the pine needles fell off in the thousands every morning...never again.

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  11. Dangermash - Having recalled a Marvel weekly, in the letters page, listing & explaining all the acronyms, I've been delving around in the garage, to find which one it is. Turns out it was MWOM # 276, with its unusual double letters page, featuring a spectacular pic of the Surfer vs the Torch, in the middle of the (fake?)readers letters! It provides the same definitions you've given, roughly speaking.

    (A couple of weeks prior, the Marvel weeklies had another double-page spread, with Santa giving his seasons greetings, alongside a pic of Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, Captain Britain & the Black Panther. I couldn't work out the artist of this tableaux, so maybe it was Steve Stiles. But I digress...It was Marvel Christmas nostalgia 1977/78.)

    I also only score an SS, as my weekly/monthly comic hauls were a joint venture with my brother - so no RFO!

    No Christmas tree - as yet - as I couldn't find the self-assembly plastic one, close at hand. I might make further efforts tomorrow, but for 4 days...probably not worth the candle.

    Nevertheless, I've bought a long 400g piece of 'Cabico' Christmas cake from Farm Foods - so I'm no Scrooge!

    Phillip

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  12. Charlie has been artificially treeing it for about 15 odd years now. The last real one left a trail of needles from the fireplace room through the kitchen through garage down the driveway… in both directions lol.

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  13. Charlie will claim RFO status too like Colin!

    Also after 55 years of reading Marvels i’ve earned FFF? Maybe I’ll ask my ole buddy Irv Forbush?!

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  14. If we're counting our 'back in the day' service to Mighty Marvel, I qualified as an RFO (at one point buying about a dozen books a month), and KOF (started a friend on comics, and much later, my two sons). Tried but never could get a letter printed, alas.

    Although we have done the live tree routine, we always go fake now. Much easier, and less sticky. However, my wife has informed me that she would like to get a live tree next year, so it looks like pine needles next Christmas!

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  15. My closest will be K.O.F. as I bored a couple of friends into reading comics. Never simultaneously bough more than two Marvel weeklies, although I definitely had spells where I purchased at least thee (US) monthlies.

    Tree is always artificial as Christmas is mid-summer in Brisbane and a real tree would last about an hour.

    DW

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  16. I still reckon dangermash SS sounds a bit iffy, dm.
    Having at least a couple of Steve Does Comics no-prizes, I reckon I'm doing pretty well on the award front.

    Anyway, heres a link to the live stream of the winter solstice sunrise from Stonehenge later this morning, which starts around 7.00 UTC -

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHAW279FnSo

    Slainte mhaith! Grianstad an gheimhridh shona daoibh go leir.

    -sean

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  17. Huh. The live stream is actually tomorrow.
    How odd. English Heritage, eh?

    -sean

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  18. You can stop the pine needles falling off by putting the tree in a bucket of water. How does a tree stand upright in a bucket of water you may ask. The tree's lowest branches just sit on the bucket's rim and the trunk dips in the water, It definitely works as we had a real tree in our house for several years in the early '80s and the needles didn't fall off. Alternatively you can buy a real tree in a pot with the roots still attached and you just water it. I'm not sure what happens when the tree gets bigger though - a bigger pot?

    Sean, I'll bet you learnt that sentence just to show off ;)

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  19. Well, I did double check it online Colin (I brushed on my Irish during lockdown - you never know when you might need a language that no-one speaks who doesn't also understand English!)

    -sean

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  20. Has anyone seen the new-look banknotes with Charles's face on them? He looks much younger on the notes than his real age (74) but so did his mother - I know you shouldn't mention a lady's age but it was getting ridiculous how the Queen looked around 50 on the notes even though she was 96 at the time of her death. And the stamps are even worse with the Queen's image unchanged since the 1950s. Anyway I no longer use cash so I won't encounter any of the new Charles banknotes (and they won't be issued until mid-2024).

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  21. Happy winter solstice, everyone!
    Always a cause for a pagan celebration.
    Now silence, please, whilst I bring back the Sun. Avert your eyes!
    Actually, you don't have to avert your eyes just yet. Ya gotta be patient.

    ...it's gonna take a while, is basically what I'm saying.
    But it'll come back. I'm pretty sure.
    You're welcome.

    M.P.

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  22. Ancient peoples cared about the Winter Solstice because it was the point when the days started lengthening again but I doubt the Summer Solstice meant anything to them and there would have been nothing to celebrate. Tell that to the daft hippies and "Druids" who regularly turn up at Stonehenge for the Summer solstice though!

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