Vaughn Bode and the Detroit Triple Fan Fair

It is hard to be sure, but from the signature, this appears to be a Vaughn Bode sketch, of his trade marked Lizards in Nazi uniforms.

I just discovered it on the Blog,

"Cap'n's Comics"

http://capnscomics.blogspot.ca

I am still, despite the passage of the years, really angry about all of the comments and comic strips that Vaughn Bode never got to say or to draw.

In the intervening forty plus years, since his untimely death, I have met people who actually knew Vaughn, warts and all and at least one of them, thought that Vaughn was a self absorbed ego maniac.

Regardless, I still remember laughing myself hoarse, over the antics of Cheech Wizard, in the pages of The National Lampoon and I wish that there had been many more of them.

It is hard to believe that Mark Bode, Vaughn's son, is now twenty years older than his father ever got to be!

Nigel & Nostalgia and Comics

I met Phil Clarke through Pete Lennon and Carl Brooks, a while before Phil got around to opening his shop,

Nostalgia & Comics

in a kiosk, in the now long gone, Hurst Street Subway, in downtown Birmingham, U.K.

I bought my comics from Phil, right up until I left Birmingham and the U.K., in 1980.

It has always been a pleasure for me, to see that the store Phil founded, is still in operation, even though Phil sold out his interest in the business, a long time ago.

This past weekend, my old pal Nigel, dropped by the old store (he still lives in the area) and was kind enough to send me a photograph of one of their latest shopping bags.

It is the little things in life, that can mean so much and this was a touching gesture because there is no way that I will be getting one for myself!

As I said to Nigel, when I thanked him, it is the ephemeral stuff, the flyers, adverts, bags and badges, that often fall through the cracks of our lives because we always seem to think that they are unworthy of collecting.

In the final analysis though, it is often these things that stay resident in memory and niggle at the edges of our brains, making us wonder if they ever actually existed.  That is part of the reason why I write this Blog, to commemorate the passing parade of my collecting life.