• If you have ever wondered what a Frank Frazetta painting might be worth, this one is up for sale at All Star Auctions. The price is $100,000. The painting was originaly reproduced on issue #7 of Jim Warren's Creepy magazine in the mid 60's. Frazetta got his inspiration for this image from a rough sketch that his friend and fellow fantasy artist Roy G. Krenkel had done for him. The backround is similiar to the original Krenkel sketch but Frazetta completely changed the figures and foreground from the sketch. Krenkel was especially talented at drawing fantastic, imaginary architecture.

• Milton the Monster, the alternate theme song explains it all.

(voice over) On top of old horror hill in a secret laboratory,
Professor Weirdo and Count Kook were in their monstrous glory.

(Professor Weirdo sings) Six drops of the essence of terror, Five drops of sinister sauce,
(Count Kook)When the stirring's done may I lick the spoon?
(Prof. W.) Of course ha ha of course.
Now for the tincture of tenderness, But I must use only a touch,
For without a touch of tenderness, He might destroy me!
(Professor Weirdo, bumped) Whoops too much.
(Prof. W.) Better hold your breath it's starting to tick:
(Count K.) Better hold my hand I'm feeling sick -
(Milton) Hello Dad!
(Prof. W.) What have I done?
(M.) I'm Milton, Your brand new son!

• To honor the electric fan, which saved me during our recent monsterous heat wave, here is a link to an inteview with Seth. He is a cartoonist and illustrator responsible for Palookaville, published by Drawn and Quartly. The main focus in Palookaville during the past few years has been Seth's story line about two brothers and their company, Clyde Fans.

• Turok, Sone of Stone first appeared in Dell Comics Four Color Comics in December 1954. It was the the story of Turok and Andar two ( some reference says pre-Colombian and others say mid 18oo Kiawa native Americans) who become trapped in a sunken valley in New Mexico, surrounded by unscalable walls, where dinosaurs and tribes of cave people still existed. The opening panel from their first story, The World Below, reads "...desert north of the Rio Grande, before the coming of white men...." The characters spent more than a quarter of a century trying to escape this lost valley in this comic book series which ran until issue 130 in 1982.
• The cover to Turok Son of Stone # 58 is one of my all time favorite comic book covers. It has a space ships, dinosaur, robots and American Indians with bows and arrows. What's not to love? the name that I have heard associated with the painted covers that Golden Key used is Moe Gollub.
• The original artist on Turok was Rex Mason , one of the artists who worked on the Tarzan newspaper strip: but most fans would associate the work of Italian born artist Alberto Giolitti with the series. Giolitti produced the art on Turok Son of Stone from 1956 (?) until the series ended in 1982. The scan is of the original art for a page from issue 106.

• "Dinosaurs Attack" was a trading card series released by Topps in 1988. It contained 55 card, 11 stickers and three wrapper variations. The cards loosly presented a story about what happens when a scientific experiment goes wrong and transports dinosaurs into present time.

The art is violent, gory and evokes memories of Topps' infamous 1962 "Mars Attacks" series. It celebrates the absurdity of the exaggerated violence and gore seen in the 1950's sci-fi B Movies and comic books.

• Uncle Ernie's CafePress shop is going through a redesign. I had too many designs and not much organization. The store front is still in a bit of a jumble; but I'm working on smoothing out the chaos. The store is up and operating; so feel free to stop by.

• When I first became aware of super hero comics in the late 50's, science fiction and monster themes were everywhere.

• Ruben Yandoc, signed Rubeny, was not a favorite comic book artist of mine in the 70's. His quarky style didn't appeal to me then. When I had the opportunity to see his original art, my indifference chances to admiration.

The low quality printing and poor paper comic were being produced on in the 1970's couldn't display his intricate and often delicate line work. His art seems to have been best suited to stories with a Twilight Zone quality. Some of the best Twilight Zone episodes have a humorous undercurrent.

Here is one from my collection of original comic art .

• Jimmy Olsen 53 is one of those, as cartoonist Scott Shaw calls them, oddball comics. This is one scanned from my collection.

As a kid, Superman was never a favorite comic of mine. Even back in 1961 the sensationalism of the covers is about all the Superman family of books had going for them.

• I've spent the last few weeks trying to keep up with deadlines for two new Sesame Street books I'm working on. After spending 8 to 12 hours a day drawing, keeping up with a web log comes after catching up on the dishes.

A week ago, friends living in Maebashi, Japan called me. They have recently installed Skype onto their PC. Butch and Keiko convinced me to install it onto my Macintosh. Since then, we have talked several times - at no charge when calling from computer to computer. How did we live before the internet?