One for John Mc

[GoogaMooga]

Hello, John Mc, get a load of this:



Felix the Cat's Greatest Comic Book Tails [Hardcover]
Otto Messmer
Otto Messmer (Author, Artist)

Product Details
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: IDW Publishing (August 24, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781600107054
ISBN-13: 978-1600107054

amazon.com review:

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Felix the Cat, the wonderful wonderful cat! Felix's original artist, Otto Messmer, penned brilliant stories for Dell and Harvey during comic books' Golden Age. Well over two-hundred pages showcase Felix's magic carpet trips to surreal lands, time's past, and into Toy Land, as well as his hilarious domestic adventures, too. Felix the Cat's Greatest Comic Book Tails sports a fascinating foreword by Don Oriolo, son of Joe Oriolo, whose wonderful stories ran alongside Messmer's and are included in the book. Comic Historian Craig Yoe sets the stage in his introduction with revealing behind-the-scenes insight complemented by rare original art and ephemera.

[John Mc]

Thanks, Googa!

Looks like a good read to me.

I see that all the votes are for me and there are none/zero/zilch/nada/nihil for that striped meatloaf, so I win! Hurrah!






Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Cat Stevens in the post office?

[GoogaMooga]

Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Cat Stevens in the post office?

No, did you two get arrested?

[John Mc]

What! No, once you hear the full story, I think that you'll agree that I was quite the hero of the day (as was indeed strongly intimated in the local press reports, and I am sure would have been more comprehensively reported in the nationals had it not been for that story of the cow on the line at Alderley Edge station)! What happened was, well, it was a few years ago now (cue Twilight Zone style wavy lines on the monitor; you will have to imagine those, I'm afraid, because i haven't got the technology, or indeed the patience even if I had, to do them for you) I was waiting in the post office queue one Saturday morning, about to post some David Cassidy CDRs off to Brother Louie (and also a Baccara compilation for Diamond Dog) when who should I spy just a few places ahead of me in the queue but that beloved bedsit bard and singer-songwriting spokeman for the sensitive and lonely-hearted, but M. Stevens himself. Flabbergasted, I was! (For being the Star Wars peaking years, around then, it must have been).

Well, the great man was unsmiling, and looked strangely downhearted. Also, he was wearing a long, dark overcoat, which the more than casual observer might have considered oppressive for such a fine but showery April saturday morning. (I myself, was wearing my usual light mac). As he neared the counter, I could see that the veteran troubador was concealing in his overcoat pocket nothing less than a small semi-automatic military German pistol, which he fingered nervously as he waited for his counter number to be called...

[John Mc]

BTW, what aren't there more votes? I see you've only voted five times, yourself...

[Zilth Pilchards]

Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Cat Stevens in the post office?

No, did you two get arrested?

That was something else....REMEMBER

as not to alarm anyone : definitely no armed robbery attempts by mr stevens !

[John Mc]

I'm sure that I hardly need remind you that a vote for me (and not that lame lardarse comic moggy) is also a good way of saying, 'Why, yes, John Mc! Mais naturellement, I wish to hear the rest of this (broadly) 'true' and exciting (cos I can easily invent a few more bits if I don't think it's going as well as it could) story, post haste! Yes! Please enrol me now and without delay! Tarry not, I implore you! Please find enclosed my cheque for, oh, hang on, that goes at the bottom of the page...

You, the readers, decide! (Unless you don't agree with me, in which case forget about that, I, John Mc, shall decide. I think that's only fair.)

[Snarfyguy]

So then what happened?

[John Mc]

So then what happened?

Well... Let me collect my thoughts for a moment (as, indeed, circumstances forced me to do on that wild and crazy morning). For I must admit, I had on the evening prior to the day of which I speak indulged in several glasses of a perfectly potable Swedish vodka, although on that absolutely successive morn, their only apparent after effect was to impart a very necessary deliberation to what might otherwise have been sundry impetuous interpretations and reactions. I had, albeit infrequently, done this on previous other occasions (and the apparent semantic redundancy is, I regret, hard to avoid, except perhaps by a spokesperson of significantly greater articulacy and linguistic fluency than myself, of which, I am sure, there is no meagre supply!) and the mental state of which I speak appears to me to be a relative existential mode, which, from the point of subjective occupation, begs the very question: what exactly is happening here? How am I to interpret and respond to these mundane and yet worldly events, as it were, pour soi (moi?) and yet en soi (moi?).

Anyway. Whatevs. At that time, I was very aware, Cat had not had a significant 'smash hit' for quite some time, save for a lowly no.67 chart placing for the 'disco mix' of the title track of 'Catch Bull at Four'. Many of the former megastar's fan following had by this stage abandoned his introspective and philosophical musings for the crude and purely physical disco riffing of the likes of Van der Graaf Generator and the Cockney Rejects. I was aware, therefore, that our man's financial and cultural stock might not now be all that it was once was! Ne'er the less, I cannot deny the frisson of shock and dismay that I now experienced, at seeing him being forced to queue with mere hoi polloi in a shabby provincial post office.

It was then that I noted that, not a dozen places behind me in the queue, there stood that skulking leather jacketed rascal who was formerly lead singer with those fly-by-night one-hit-wonders and powerpop exponents, the Anti-Nowhere League. I recognised this ne'er do well by sight, as he was a well-known local villain, rarely spotted in the hours of daylight unless he were making his way from the local off-licence carrying homewards a bulging carrier bag full of cans of Carlsberg Special Brew.

Something, perhaps an uncanny psychic intuition, gave me the sense that the very presence of this rapscallion in the place was no good omen.

I have previously mentioned that my keen powers of observation had already alerted me to Cat's strange behaviour, and it was to the 'Morning has broken' singer that my attention now, perforce, turned. Why on earth, in this public place of commerce and everyday financial transaction, was the popular composer of 'Peace Train' and ''I love my dog' carrying on his person such a lethal and (to my trained and observant eye - admittedly not the privilege of all!) ill concealed weapon?! Intuitively, I felt that it was my civic and social duty to investigate further, whether that might have been my conscious choice or no...

[John Mc]

Actually, I might leave a saucerful of milk with some honey in it out for the elves tonight, so they'll come and write a bit more for me whilst I'm sleeping.

What do you think?

[GoogaMooga]

Actually, I might leave a saucerful of milk with some honey in it out for the elves tonight, so they'll come and write a bit more for me whilst I'm sleeping.

What do you think?

hey man, it's your show!

[John Mc]

Honey for the elves it is then!