Tag Archives: Atomic Junkshop

June 20, 2025 · 4:26 pm

Weep for the soul of man!

Last evening the power went out. As the power company predicted, they cleared up the problem (fallen trees) in 3.5 hours, just under the deadline for throwing food out of the fridge (for the freezer it’s 24 hours). Only there was a secondary problem affecting a much smaller area, which happened to include us. Missed the deadline by 30 minutes! And no, we don’t chance it — better to sacrifice uneaten food than go to the hospital with food poisoning.

Oh, for tech like Captain Cold’s … instead, we’ll be making a trip to the supermarket today. On the plus side, almost all our cooked food had been eaten during the week — doesn’t always work out that way — and I have powdered milk I can use for tea.

Other than that, this was another week dominated by Jekyll and Hyde and the Local Reporter. I finished rewriting the chapter on silent films, rewatching a couple of them; watched a 2002 adaptation (review to follow eventually) and searched in vain for a 2003 British film (not streaming, not available on US-playable DVD). For The Local Reporter I sat through a four-hour Carrboro Town Council meeting which will provide several stories. Only the first, about the challenge of balancing fire safety and pedestrian safety on older, narrow streets, is up.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I cross-posted a couple of recent articles and put in one new one, on how DC and Marvel made reprint books a major part of their Bronze Age output. DC Special was an interesting example as it wasn’t tied to any particular character (as opposed to a Spider-Man or Superman annual) so they could do a variety of themes. Wanted was a particularly inspired one, leading to a sequel special, then a reprint series. Even though it’s just a set of Silver Age superhero stories, framing it as supervillain stories made it seem so much cooler.

Away from the computer, I attended this month’s meeting of the local Genre Book Club, which reads a different genre every month. I attended my first meeting in November, but cut it short because Wisp was having some problems. In January I went again but to the wrong place. Now I’ve made it two months in a row and I look forward to going again.

Oh, in case you’re wondering the genre was adventure books, hence my recent reading of Captain Blood.

Covers by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson (bottom), all rights to images remain with current holders.

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June 13, 2025 · 4:18 pm

My luck ran out

I’ve had plenty of friends talk about bad initial reactions to their vaccinations. I’ve never had much trouble except with the flu vaccine. This week, though, one of the vaccines I got Tuesday left me groggy for a couple of days. That did not help my output. However the groggy wore off by late Thursday — and vaccines are still a health miracle.

Nor did it help that everyone I tried contacting for Local Reporter articles early in the week — I wanted to set up interviews for midweek — was out (that time of year, I guess). So I spent Wednesday while I was feeling groggy trying to find an idea I could bat out in a much shorter span of time. I got several ideas I can tackle later but that was it. I wound up doing a short article about Pride Month in Carrboro and nothing else. That wasted a lot of time I could have spent on other projects.

I did get the second chapter of Jekyll and Hyde rewritten, focusing on the Victorian stage adaptations. Rereading the stage plays, I realized the landmark Richard Mansfield adaptation not only introduced Jekyll’s love interest to the sausage-fest story (there’s also bad girl for Hyde but rather than his lover, it’s his landlady) but establishing Jekyll as a good man who screwed up his research rather than a morally mixed man who deliberately became Edward Hyde.

The later Irving adaptation now looks to me to have a very strong influence on the 1920 John Barrymore film version. In that version Sir George Carew, wife of Jekyll’s sweetheart, is an old roue who thinks Jekyll, a man with no vices, is a fool: the only way to manage one’s lusts and base urges is to have enough experience you can master them. Several film reference sources suggest Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray’s mentor in sin, is the template the screenwriter used for Sir George. But in the Irving stage play Sir Danvers Carew is also a lecher and adulterer; I suspect that’s a much more likely inspiration for the film’s take. And the shot of Hyde below looks a lot like Barrymore’s Hyde.

Here’s Barrymore.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at the first appearance of Tony Stark’s father, Howard, plus a few images from 1970s comics. One of them is below, an ad hinting at Jack Kirby’s imminent arrival at DC Comics.

As explained at the link, I don’t think the add works.

Not a great week for work, in other words, but I am very pleased with my Chapter Two rewrite. And last month I sold an ebook of 19-Infinity and one of Questionable Minds so yay! And thanks, whoever you were — I hope you liked them.

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, doctors, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

June 6, 2025 · 4:30 pm

Meet the danger noodle

About a week and a half ago I was walking Plushie when I saw this.

TYG confirmed that’s a copperhead, slithering through the dead leaves between our house and the neighbors. Since then we’ve kept the dogs well away from that stretch. But then Sunday TYG returned home and saw the “danger noodle” again, on our front steps.

As venomous reptiles go, copperheads are not omega level threats — even small dogs like ours would probably survive a bite. Still, the thought of Trixie or Plushie getting bitten isn’t acceptable, so we’ve been checking the steps every time we go out. We did call a snake removal service but they don’t work Sunday, don’t do rapid response and so the odds of the snake being in one place until they get here are slim. Plus they’d probably kill him and TYG would rather not.

This was a chaotic week. We had dog annual exams on Wednesday, I had lunch with a friend on Thursday, we went out Thursday night and TYG had to run errands Wednesday evening. Up until Tuesday morning I thought I had my annual physical but I checked at the last minute and that’s next week. Despite which it was productive. I had a final story on Carrboro’s town budget (they passed it) and one on a local disability-justice group. Regrettably that sucked up more time for my own stuff than I wanted, but it’s a paying gig.

At Atomic Junk Shop I blogged Captain America and Black Canary becoming bikers, and another “relevant” story — only the tale of Iron Man vs. the radical leftist Firebrand is good.

Good enough I blogged about it here, too. Art by Don Heck.

For my own work, I concentrated on rewriting the early chapters of Jekyll and Hyde. This went slower than I’d planned: the chapter on Victorian stage plays was one I wrote very early, before I’d figured out the structure I wanted. It needs much more work. I’m partway through — good thing I budgeted plenty of time for rewriting this month.

And there we have it. Enjoy your weekend — I certainly will.

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Filed under Nonfiction, Personal, Short Stories, The Dog Ate My Homework, Time management and goals, Writing

Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, doctors, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

May 30, 2025 · 4:19 pm

A weird and somewhat messy week

It’s a good thing to take time off. And much as I enjoy trips like Ravencon, they don’t count. Time off involves kicking back, being unstructured (I’m overly organized and rarely pull this off) and having as few obligations as possible (with four pets to take care of, I usually have some). So I schedule one work day off a month.

As TYG left Thursday on a mini-vacation (back tomorrow), this seemed like a good week for it. I know from experience that watching over the pets full-time doesn’t promote focus. So three days of work, Thursday to do blogging and the like, Friday to watch movies.

It didn’t work so well. Monday, for various reasons, we got back late from the dogs’ physical rehab sessions, which threw off my morning. I got distracted by various little tasks that ate into my time. And I also spent a lot more time than I should have doing research reading. After thinking about the number of Jekyll/Hyde films that include sex workers, from Ivy in the Fredric March version to the murdered streetwalkers of Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

I researched the topic online and discovered Russell Campbell’s Marked Women, a book about prostitution in the movies. It’s quite dense and I spent all day Tuesday finishing it. I think it was worth it though (review to come soon). Then yesterday, after I drove around for a bunch of errands, I wound up cleaning out my email — I try to do that once a week — and that sucked up more time than anticipated. So I’m blogging much of today rather than crashing and lounging. Such is life.

I did get in a Local Reporter article on the improved parking situation in Carrboro (much like Destin, parking is a hot topic there). I also got up an Atomic Junk Shop post about a strange 1970 Supergirl story (were 1970s college students really into Greta Garbo?) and Steve Rogers being a jerk to his girlfriend Sharon Carter (as shown below. Gene Colan art).

Stan Lee was still doing good work on Spider-Man but I don’t think he had any idea what he was doing with Captain America.

The end result, this was neither as productive nor as relaxing a week as I’d hoped. Perhaps June’s day off will be better.

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

May 23, 2025 · 4:37 pm

There is once again disorder under heaven …

— but the situation is, if not excellent, fairly decent (“disorder under heaven but the situation is excellent” is an old quote from Mao Zedong).

It didn’t look like it would be when Plushie got up Saturday morning and puked up blood … but it turned out it was just the colored coating of the antibiotics he’s on. Antibiotics stopped (vet’s recommendation), he was back to normal. Indeed, better than normal — since treating his eyes last week, he’s been really lively, even pulling a few of his old misbehaviors. I think his eyes must have been hurting for longer than we realized, poor guy.

Second bit of disorder, an absolutely wretched night of sleep Monday. It did not make me productive Tuesday. Then, Thursday, I had a dental cleaning — everything looks good, but appointments like that always throw me off my game the rest of the day. I would have worked around that (research reading or low-concentration tasks) but we also had the housecleaners arriving that afternoon which meant a couple of hours sitting with the pets in the spare bedroom to keep them out of the way. And keep the cats from running out in alarm at the strangers in the house!!!

As Snowdrop doesn’t go up to the bedroom as often as Wisp does, TYG had to catch him and lock him in. He didn’t struggle but he was not happy. Maybe happier than usual — we put down lots of catnip and feline soothing spray — but we need a better method. I’ve been putting food upstairs to get him used to the bedroom; I don’t think it’s enough but I’m not sure what is. Still, we have another month to work on it.

So that was Thursday largely out of the game. And today I took Trixie in for a quick dewclaw trim because it’s digging into her skin. Normally our groomer trims ’em but we canceled this month’s appointment to avoid any irritation to Plushie’s eyes.

Plus I had more Local Reporter work this week than usual, not one but two council meetings, one on the Carrboro town budget, one on its downtown development plan. That was five hours of meetings, plus the writing.

Everything else was Jekyll and Hyde — watching a couple more movies, doing a lot of reference reading (papers, books), rewriting some sections. Even one of my Atomic Junkshop pieces this week was J&H related, a look at the two “Mr. Hyde was a cokehead” films of the 1980s (when else?). The other was my article about the Black Widow’s 1970 reboot, reposted to fit into my Silver Age Reread there.

That’s John Romita giving ‘tasha the distinctive look that would define her for the rest of the century (even her current look isn’t that far off).

Plus Sunday TYG and I took the first bike ride together since at least the pandemic, possibly longer (it’s one of those habits it’s easy to fall out of, it seems). It was great — she pushed me to go a lot further than I usually ride — though her bike’s saddle is slipping up and down so much, we can’t repeat until REI figures out the problem (it’s an older model).

Oh, and my friend Kat Traylor has proposed a follow-up to our collaborative anthology Ceaseless Way (GetCovers design, based on suggestions by Arden Brooks). Tentative theme: escape. Despite the amount of work it took last time, I have one, maybe two stories that would work for the theme so why not? And it should be easier as we know what we’re doing. We’ve begun inviting new writers in and a couple have said yes. Oh, if you want the first volume, it’s available in paperback and ebook.

So that was my week. Hope yours was good. Now bring on the weekend.

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter

May 16, 2025 · 4:18 pm

Despite the last guy with the axe, this week was reasonably productive

I have long felt this Billy Graham cover for Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #6 is a good metaphor for life, which is why I’ve posted it before. You think you’ve got a handle on everything but you don’t see the armored axe-man coming up behind you.

The first axe-man was taking our dogs for their twice-yearly exam at Quartet Rehab Monday morning. We knew about it in advance but still, coupled with the pups’ regular weekly rehab session, it took up the entire morning. That’s a chunk of time out of the workweek.

Wednesday we had a minor emergency, dealt with promptly but it threw me off my game the rest of the day. TYG also took Plushie in for his eye exam, even though it looked like the problems from last week were over. Nope: as usual she was right when she suspected a problem. Ulcers in both eyes, now treated (though he’ll get more eventually). That and the new set of exercises we got from the vet have added to the distractions.

This morning Trixie woke up a little after midnight with an urgent need to go out … except she didn’t do anything. It still through my morning routine completely off (having barely four hours of sleep didn’t help, obviously).

Still, I managed to get a fair amount done. For The Local Reporter I wrote one story about local artist Aliyah Bonnette and another about the Chapel Hill/Carrboro school district budget. At Atomic Junk Shop I got in an article about the last issue of the original Challengers of the Unknown (with a Neal Adams cover) and the demise of several once popular series as the Silver Age wound down.

I didn’t get any fiction written but I wrote a lot on Jekyll and Hyde (as well as some research reading) and got some rewriting done on Savage Adventures. Under the circumstances, I’m pleased. Oh, and I wound up reading another section of Jekyll and Hyde to the writing group and got some good feedback. One part of it was that the book was more interesting when I offered my own opinions rather than just going over the plot, visuals, themes, etc. I thought I was offering my own opinions about all that so I’ll have to parse out what they’re talking about.

Somewhat less satisfactorily, my exercise program flatlined this week. Most days, breaking it down into short five minute bursts is the only way to do it. When I get really busy, though, it’s much harder to get up and deliver on that than when I have time blocked out for it. In my head-canon I’m ending the week a flabby blob whose heart’s going to give out at any minute — don’t worry, I know that’s bullshit but it’s still frustrating.

On the whole, though, I’m still satisfied.

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, Local Reporter, Savage Adventures

May 9, 2025 · 4:00 pm

Beware the eyes that paralyze!

No, not these eyes —

Nor this one on the Bob Brown cover —

— but our very own Plush Dudley.

Wednesday night he started squinting in the right eye. Not consistently, but as that’s his bad glaucoma eye, TYG got worried and took him in to the emergency vet while I stayed home with Trixie. TYG will do anything to take care of our dogs, and when she sees a problem, she’s usually right.

The vet found higher than usual pressure, nothing more. This left us both tired Thursday, and I took him in to our regular vet for a second look. By the time that was done, I was off my game and couldn’t accomplish anything beyond research reading the rest of the day. The good news is, his pressure was back to normal (it’s not the first time we’ve gotten a false positive) and he’s not squinting. So perhaps it was some dirt or grit that got into his eye and got washed out at some point.

The rest of the week, though, was productive. Monday I made the edits Stonecoast Literary Review requested on Bleeding Blue, then worked on Savage Adventures.

Tuesday I got a couple of films watched for Jekyll and Hyde, plus I rewrote several pieces and began rethinking the structure. As I learn more about the variety of films, my original chapter breakdown doesn’t look adequate but I’m not sure how to rearrange it yet.

Wednesday was the day for The Local Reporter — a three-hour council meeting to watch, then writing a story on the ever-controversial plans for a paved walkway along Bolin Creek, and one on next year’s budget.

As today is my day for blogging and such, that was it for work. I’d hoped to work on some fiction yesterday but I didn’t have the focus.

I also have two posts up at Atomic Junk Shop, one on comic books slow transition to the Bronze Age, one on a wildly ridiculous Superman story. The Curt Swan cover doesn’t capture how nutty it is.

Overall, a good week of work. And Plushie’s eye meds aren’t failing him yet, which is cool too.

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, jekyll and hyde, let no man put asunder, Local Reporter

April 25, 2025 · 4:15 pm

Nothing done, except maybe a little rest

As I’ve said in posts past, sooner or later comes a day or a week where nothing works, just by random luck. And so it was this week as assorted random factors all ganged up on me.

First off, I was still wiped from my lingering cold, not having gotten a thorough day of rest like I should.

Second, I knew I wouldn’t have today to work because of some three-day weekend stuff we’re doing. And I didn’t have a complete day yesterday because the house-cleaners come which requires a lot of maneuvering the pets around. So Mr. Hyde began whispering I might as well not even try to focus.

Having two doctor’s appointments threw me off too. One was an urgent care visit about my sore throat: I’ll be very social this weekend and talking too much can aggravate a sort throat into laryngitis, as I know from experience. They gave me a steroid and I almost immediately started to feel better.

The second visit was to get some vaccine shots — covid, primarily — because who knows if they’ll be available a month from now, given the lunatic running federal health services.

Plus as TYG was off this week, we hit Costco Wednesday to stock up on stuff. We’d have gone on the weekend, but we couldn’t make Saturday and they were closed Easter Sunday.

So all I accomplished in writing was an Atomic Junk Shop post about Marvel’s release from June, 1970 — not a particularly landmark month, but the topic seemed to stimulate my brain. Above, a John Buscema cover; below, one by his brother Sal.

I also wrote an article for The Local Reporter about state bills that would gut local governments’ ability to control development.

And that was it. But I did rest up quite a bit; hopefully enough.

Four months into the year, I feel somewhat bummed that nothing’s finished or ready to go. Impossible Takes a Little Longer, Let No Man Put Asunder and Jekyll and Hyde are chugging along but no major landmarks achieved; we still haven’t nailed down the cover for Southern Discomfort; and it feels like nothing will ever sell or be finished, ever. I know that’s not true, but I can’t help the brooding.

All rights to cover remain with current holders. Luke Cage cover by Billy Graham.

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, Local Reporter

April 18, 2025 · 4:02 pm

This week I was trapped, tangled and in total trouble!

No, wait, that’s the guy on Sal Trapani’s cover. My week wasn’t quite that bad.

When I talked about successfully fighting off a cold last week, I was optimistic. I have kept the usual bronchial infection at arm’s length but stuff like this usually requires a day of rest to shake off and I hadn’t given myself one. Nor have I gotten one since. So I’m still feeling wiped out (a couple of bad nights of sleep didn’t help) and still coughing a little. If it persists into next week I’ll visit the doctor.

Still I did get plenty done. Work on Savage Adventures, some movies watched for Jekyll and Hyde, and two articles for The Local Reporter. One on Carrboro’s plans to protect residents in the current political climate, one on the budget for the coming fiscal year. Over at Atomic Junk Shop I blogged about Green Lantern #76, considered one of the books that launched the Bronze Age.

I’m not a fan of Denny O’Neil’s writing here — I rarely am — but that is one hell of a cool Neil Adams cover!

I also finished the taxes which proved more work than I’d anticipated. On the plus side I found enough savings that we’re entitled to refunds at the state and federal level. I mailed them off Tuesday. I’d like to say “next year I’ll handle them much more efficiently” but like so many Americans I’ve said that too many years to believe it.

This weekend I do hope to turn Sunday into a lazy, layabout day. We’ll see if it happens. In any case, have a great weekend everyone!

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Tagged as Atomic Junkshop, Local Reporter

April 11, 2025 · 4:20 pm

A week of dodging bullets. Yes, that’s a good thing.

First up, I spent today proofing our income taxes. I spotted several errors and when I crunched all the numbers our bill went from $500 in to maybe $100. Whoot! My brain is shot but all I have to do now is print out the forms and send them in.

Second, it was Plush Dudley’s eye checkup this week. He’s had glaucoma for a year and the pet optometrist told us that’s usually the point at which the drugs stop working. Nope, his eye pressure is still excellent. That’s really good news.

Third, TYG went to a social event last weekend and developed a hacking cough a couple of days later. Then I started to hack and cough. No, that’s not good news but it’s very good news that it’s largely cleared up for both of us. Normally she has a hard time fighting off these things and I’ve had multiple infected throats intensify into laryngitis. Doesn’t seem to be happening.

And last but definitely not least, Wednesday morning my iPhone stopped charging. Bad news, obviously, but when I took it to the Apple Store right after lunch, the young woman at the Genius Bar solved the problem — debris in the charging port — and cleared it out easily. I’m impressed and relieved.

Work was … okay, partly because I had to spend the whole day working on the taxes. I’d thought it would be smoother but I made more errors than I thought, and kept thinking “Oh no, that makes us pay out more” followed by “oh, but this error cancels that one out and then some.” Trust me, not as exciting as it sounds.

I didn’t watch anything for Jekyll and Hyde but did work on the section covering Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde. Reading some of the reviews and analysis of the film, I found it more interesting (not necessarily more entertaining) than my review at the link.

I proofed another dozen or so entries in Savage Adventures including yes, The Mental Wizard. I wound up writing two articles for The Local Reporter, one of which they’re holding for next week. They printed one article on the local Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle and one held over from last week on Carrboro’s commitment to Vision Zero, a program for eliminating pedestrian deaths due to traffic.

Over at Atomic Junk Shop we’re suffering an ongoing problem: our tech/admin person is AWOL (valid personal reasons), the site won’t let us load photos a lot of the time, and the hosting company isn’t answering my emails. In hindsight having one person handle the admin with nobody designated as backup was a mistake but this was always meant to be a fun project so none of us thought about that. TYG, skilled IT pro that she is, would have known better.

Still I managed to get some stuff up: reprinting an old post about the choice between buying old vs. new comics, one on what makes a good antihero and one on Timothy Dalton’s debut as Bond in The Living Daylights (Maryam D’Abo, below, plays the Bond Girl)