Toxic revenge

Not much doing this week. Found another Hardy Boys book in the wild, it's Toxic Revenge which can only be described as the Hardys do Extinction Rebellion, but with the focus on Recycling instead of Climate Change. I'm only a chapter in so far and for some reason it's given us the heights of Frank and Joe Hardy. Frank 6'1 and Joe 6 foot, now all they'll need is a six pack and a well paying job and they can join the 666 club on dating apps.

Picked this up in Barking along with a Jim O'Rourke single (Halfway to a Threesome) which ain't bad. Ignore the numbering and covers in the link above, this is the weird 2000's reissue when Simon and Schuster decided to reprint a bunch of the casefile books seemingly at random. This is the sort of thing you should be getting.

Like I say I'm only a chapter in at present and as I'm not transcribing the Casefiles series, there's no DL link for you this time. We'll be up and running next week with The Secret Panel as our chosen target.

Junk

 Not a junk tour but a tour on a junk

This is the 34th Hardy boys story and the boys have pitched in to buy a Chinese Junk to ferry people across the summer season. It seems that Jim Foy a Chinese pal of theirs has a lead on a cheap ship to buy and with a load of interest from various parties. You just know there is going to be a mystery attached to it.

This is the one that makes up to the Chinese community at large, for the way they were depicted in the original Footsteps Under the Window. No funny accents and no dragging up of a hapless Chinese here. The representation seems pretty good for the time, and it seems that this is the only book Jim was in. 

The gang is all here, Biff Hooper, Tony Prito (who's the same age as Frank here, 18) Chet Morton with a caving hobby that you know will be used in the mystery. Also Callie Shaw and Iola Morton get a look in, too. 

The junk they've bought is of course stolen and several parties want it back, Add in a mysterious doctor who's been robbing people, while passed out, this includes their aunt Gertrude, who can normally spot a wrong'un from several yards away. You have the making of a pretty good mystery. 

You can read it here.

Crap Rules Everything Around Me.

As I mentioned last week, we got a magazine at the bootsale that is the sort of also ran trash we used to see all the time, when Viz made it big back in the early 90's.

The sort of knock off comics like Oink, Zit and Smut comics, that sprang up around that time but never seemed to have the lasting power of Viz. Also, holy shit, after reading that wiki article, Oink had some decent contributors there. I can remember a strip in one of them called Tourettes of Duty, and I think Reeders wife, after the amateur porn trope Reader's Wives.

This bastard, I have no recollection of. It's sort of like a crap photo love comic strip, crossed between the sort of lad culture that was big around that time and the aforementioned knock off Viz style comic. Is it funny, not really it has its moments, but it's not going to set the world on fire. A quick Jammy search, brings up a companies house search with the former MD here, and seeing as its based out of Harrow, North London, kinda rings true. 

The style, reminds me of the kind of cheap softcore porn mag you'd find ripped up under the hedge near your school. A Parade or Cheap Thrills type rather than the expected Mayfair. Fiesta or Razzle. 

I'd list all that was in it but, I've taken the liberty to scan it and put it up on archive.org. 

You can read and indeed download, Cream issue 2 here. 

Incidentally that implies there is an issue one out there and indeed any more after that, I'm guessing looking at companies house look up that there was at least one more issue put out.

M vs CU

Here is a thing, I was supposed to talk about something entirely different today. What if the Marvel VS Capcom Universe was an SRPG played for laughs like Disgaea but more Super Robot Wars level of inclusion. If you're an MCU fan, think that bit Deadpool 2 with all the shitty super heroes, that level of irrelevance, and treated with the same reverence. 

More importantly its because I was reading about this guy at work (looking for variant Spiderman) and wondered what kind of redemption this would need to put it in a game as either main bad guy or playable character. Oh and finally having Ryu from Breath Of Fire being remembered for something other than Breath Of Fire.

Yeah, in other news I picked up a crappy photo love magazine / Viz knock off from the early 90's that reeks of soft core porn and is totally cringe but maybe next week I'll talk on that.

Eye check

Took a day off last week to have my first post SARS 2 electric boogaloo eye check.  Registering with Boots, as they let you book online without having to call up first. as I hate talking over the phone.

Our nearest Boots optician is next to our bank and for some reason thought it was part of the regular Boots store which is down by Primark. Funny as I was stressing about reaching this on time, but when I found it was next to my bank I saw the funny side.

Less funny is that I have to shell out for new specs and such which are long overdue. And have a doctors appointment as one of my pupils has turned inward. I'm not going to google this as it'll only depress me and would rather have an actual expert look at it.

EDIT. Its a squint. I finally got my referral letter and booked up in June, so maybe It'll be sorted by then.

More fun is that due to strikes / Marathon I had my junk tour on a Thursday instead of the weekend. We went to Bethnal Green and wanted to look at Hackney but ended up going down to Dalston via Haggerston, as I decided to take the main road past the charity shops instead of doubling back as usual.

There are an awful lot of poncey stores and start ups this end and a few chicks with feminist Killjoy stickers on, like a bug having bright colours so you know its poisonous AF. But apart from that, it wasn't all bad. We found a new museum, the museum of the home and a place called, I think, Woof which had a Corgi going wild in a ball pit, so I guess its a dog play park.

Dalston has a well nice charity shop which sold things for cheap and I got Chicken lips and a Dr. Octagon CD for a quid, and shades of the long gone Crest in Walthamstow still had VHS for sale.

On to the Oxfam which had a sealed Nobukazu Takemura EP for sale and a Baby Ford Fabric mix cd. which was boss.

Decided to take a long walk back and get crossrail home at Liverpool street, which has to be said feels like the city proper, and the most hipster free imaginable.

Excellent Shiba Inu carrier

Apology accepted