Suction Cups

I have a friend at work who recently accused me of having the super power of making boring, everyday stories seem slightly interesting.


And I admit, perhaps my type of stories aren't the roller coasters of adventure that I think they are. But... they're my stories and I'm gonna tell them anyway.

Like this one. It's awkward.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my new comic book sanctuary and the concept of focusing the collection. I've been sticking to that idea pretty well as I set up the sanctuary. And I started the sanctuary with the most important display. A glass case full of licensing stuff from the 1970's.


But the case is heavy. And it loads from the back. You need a key to open it, and there's the constant danger of scratching the hard wood floors when swiveling the case out to add stuff to it.


It's quite the quandary.

When I first populated the case and carefully swiveled it back into place, this terrible tragedy happened.


All the Super Friends lined up and posing. Except for Wonder Woman, who took a nose dive. HEAVY SIGH! This would not do. What if I got something new for the collection? Or found something boxed up for years that really belonged on display?


Vaguely inappropriate Wonder Woman scissors?


DEFINITELY inappropriate Wonder Woman scissors. How can I not display these? But the case is set up already! What to do? What to do?


What could be the solution to such a devastatingly perplexing, first-world problem?


Lorie, as always came up with the solution. And when she first suggested it, I was more than a little dubious.


Suction cups? Really? But would they hold my weight?

Lorie went on to explain the devices wouldn't be used to scale buildings, as I had immediately assumed. But instead, I could attach them to the top piece of glass in the case and remove it, populating my antique dollies from above.

I was a little worried that my natural clumsiness would bring this operation to a disastrous end. So I enlisted some help.


She was dubious too.

What? I'm going to ask Ashton to help?? We've SEEN what he can do.


This was just the lawn mower, folks. On the first lawn mowing of the season, no less. No No... my go-to "Collection Assistant" is my overly OCD daughter, Katie.

Just what an eleven year old girl aspires too.

So we got the suction cups attached.


Katie nervously took hold...


... and... IT WORKED!


Worked very well, I might add. So we took some things out and played for awhile.


And then we set up some displays.





















Afterwards, we got the glass back on with no problem at all.


That may not have seemed like a pulse-pounding adventure to you folks, but it certainly had my heart racing a little.

Thanks,
DCD

My First Romance Comic

The other day, I read my first romance comic book. That's right.... I ramble on and on about different genre's and mediums and variety and content and decades of undervalued material, and I haven't even sampled every genre under my medium of choice.

It's because deep down I'm much less an intellectual and much more an eight year old boy still in love with super-heroes.

But I finally did it. I picked a couple and gave them a try. I was actually somewhat surprised at what I found.


In my first year of college at West Chester University, I took a couple of classes that really opened my eyes to a wider world of how to perceive literature. Of course, the classes dealt with LITERATURE... and that part was lost on me. But it toiled around in my brain until I began to understand different perspectives in criticism and different ways of looking at a particular work.

One class I took dealt with pop culture. It was a class that looked at how pop culture effected our every day lives and could be reflected in our entertainment and what we could learn about ourselves and our society. This is the class that influences this blog the most. One of the assignments I remember was to bring in advertisements from one particular magazine. We talked about discerning who the target audience was based on the advertisements and came up with some interesting observations. An indirect way of looking at the source material.

While I read Love Stories #149, published in 1973 by DC Comics, I was struck by how new it was. The stories were very 'dated' in the treatment of women and romance, the clothing styles were dated, and I was used to all that. It even featured artists that were familiar to me. But almost from the first page it was quite obvious I was not the target audience. The ads were for wigs and nails and weight control and books on how to get boys and be popular and I even found where I could send away for a book of pictures of dreamy 1970's actor, Chad Everett. Siiiigh.


Maureen McCormick was shilling a book about being popular on one page. The letters page read like a 'Dear Abby' column. And surprise of surprises... a house ad for DC super hero comics. But only DC super hero comics with female stars. I can honestly say I've never seen this house ad before and I've read comics from all over the seventies several times over. This particular ad was aimed at girls.


The experience wasn't altogether unpleasant. It was new. It wouldn't entertain me for long, but it was good to try it out.

After thinking a lot about this experience, I asked my eleven year old daughter Katie to bring me one of her One Direction magazines.

It. Was. So. Much. Worse.


Thanks,
DCD