ug: For those of you who don't live in the States, tomorrow is Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer. Since Karen's a working stiff year 'round, and I have the luxury of teaching, I've only been back to school for two weeks. But hopefully we've all been able to take a vacation or at least a short holiday to recharge, spend time with family and friends, etc. Today, not only leave a comment about those travels of yours, but if you just happened to come into any comics-related goodness along the past three months, let us know!
Doug: I had a pretty busy summer. It began with teaching three weeks of economics in summer school. That, however, was broken up by a one-week training for teaching reading, which is a big focus in my high school.
In July I spent 10 days in Washington, DC at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum attending meetings and facilitating two national teacher institutes. And then in August our family spent nine days on the road with a trip to Walt Disney World the main attraction on the voyage. In the midst of all of that, I did manage to score three volumes of Marvel Masterworks: X-Men, Volume 7 (featuring the Beast's Amazing Adventures run), Inhumans, Volume 1 (featuring their own Amazing Adventures run), and Marvel Masterworks Volume 141 featuring the Jungle Action run of the Black Panther. I also snagged the first volume of the Chronicles of Conan -- Barry Smith's inaugural issues on the title. So, a busy several weeks, but with lots of smiles.
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This summer wasn't too exciting, more typical of my schedule than the last few years spent in Kuwait on deployments (140 degs anyone..?).
Usually when I'm away from my full-time gov't work, I'm double-dippin' with my Army life, so it's brought a lot of cash in to get our driveway redone. My wife did plan a train trip back to TX for fun this October for a week.
Primarily, just enjoying BAB each morning at work, collecting vintage Marvel mags, more figures, doing more Open G and slide playin' on my guitars and just glad to be able to go home everynight (unlike the deployments). I've done too much world traveling already in my life on the 'government plan'; guess I need a new travel agent.
I saw Batman Live in Glasgow and had a weekend break in the Machars of Galloway; an area I hadn't visited since 1976! The rest of the time I was up here in the Highlands.
I also bought the first four isues of G-S Conan and three Thorpe and Porter Double Double Comics from the very early 70s.
Most of the summer was spent working, but just today my wife and I are winding down a 3-week vacation on Croatia's Adriatic coast - we realized it was the first real vacation we'd had together since 2006. And we did what we usually do on such vacations: mostly relax, doing a little swimming, and read tons and tons of books. I managed to get through a few behemoths, like Hilary Mantel's "Place of Greater Safety," which have been sitting collecting dust on my bookshelf for years now. Only comic-related thing I read was Essential Killraven, which leads me to ask yet again, why the hell did this not get a color reprint?
I'm a graphic artist who works at home, so one month pretty much blurs into the next for me. I was decently busy with work this summer (which is good), but, I still managed to have some fun as well.
My wife and I celebrated our 20 year wedding anniversary by going away for a couple of days.
I got some cool comic related stuff for my B-Day. Most notably both Marvel Masterwork volumes of the Human Torch series from Strange Tales, and the hardcover edition of the "Complete Frank Miller Spider-Man". I also picked up every issue of "Black Goliath" on Ebay, as well as a bunch of other bronze age comics. I read a lot of classic stuff the past few months and it was a lot of fun.
I managed to catch all the major comic related movies at the theater. I especially enjoyed Captain America and X-Men: First Class.
I also picked up a few new action figures and created several new Action Figure comics. Which, If anyone's interested, can be found here at my site…
http://www.billscomics.com/afcomics.html
My newest one is a Defenders story and I just completed a Daredevil comic as well, which I'll be posting in a few days.
All-in-all, it was a decent (but very hot) summer. Going to cap it off by visiting a friend of mine in Park City Utah next week. Hope everybody else had a good one as well.
William- congratulations on your recent anniversary! My wife and I recently saw our 25th.; economics dictating that we stay fairly close to home. Most of the summer was work, at least until a couple weeks ago when I had surgery on my right hand. Nothing serious, it is slowly healing but took me off work for the while ( so goes summer vacation).
This recent free time gave us time to travel around locally hunting flea markets and garage sales; something we both enjoy. She found several of her Precious Moments figures; I picked up several comics. Most notably, numerous 60's era Archies, and some Action and Adventure from 1966. There is still a kick in leafing through a box of comics looking for a jewel in the roughies...
Have a good, safe weekend everyone!
It's been one of the most pleasant summers in quite some time. I teach, so normally I get some time off in the summer, but not like this year. I usually work summer school and end up with a few weeks, this time that didn't develop and I had a cool two months, the first time in over twenty years of doing this gig.
With that luxury of time, I watched many of the comic book related movies that came out. I did a close reading of Charlton's E-Man series. I also did a close reading of DC's JLA-JSA crossovers. I read some pulps too.
I also took care of my wife who suffers from chronic pain, and for the first time in several years, we didn't spend some time in the hospital with a procedure or something.
Both my girls started the summer without jobs, but both found good teaching jobs before the end of the summer season. And finally at the end of summer, I got a brand new job myself in another school district, an offer completely out of the blue. It has made for a hectic last few weeks indeed.
I'm sad to see summer go, as it's been a positive one for all of my family. Hopefully good things will continue into the fall and beyond.
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