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rest in peace

Mom: 20 Years On

I can’t believe I’m writing down that it’s TWENTY YEARS since my mother died. In all kinds of ways it seems surreal, improbable and deeply perplexing to try to process this apparent fact of chronology.

And yet, there it is. I have lately been rebuilding/restoring the old archives on this blog, dating back to December 7th 2000 (how naïve it all seemed back then), more than half of which are now back online, with much more to come… and there’s no doubting that these events happened a full two decades ago. The same day Alex Toth died; the birthday of both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee—what is it about May 27th?!

Mom August 1956
This is mom in August 1956, aged 13. She was a cool teen.

If you haven’t already, I hope you go and read the blog I wrote back on May 27th 2006 (and indeed my contribution in the comments thread). These posts say it all, with much more clarity and raw immediacy than I can hope to summon today. I was curiously impressed, looking back, at how articulate I was. I’m not sure I’d handle it as well today. I know I wasn’t, in fact, handling it well at all at that time (who does?)—but I was expressing myself extremely well.

I would like to use the second half of this post to… go deeper. But first, the positive stuff. I have a photo album page, fully restored and updated, dedicated to mom—which I will update over time, as I continue to scan more of the best old photos I have. You can view the page as it stands here:

In Memory of Mom.
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Births & Deaths

So, as almost all horror fans know, today is the birthday of both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee… and just yesterday was Peter Cushing’s date of birth, by odd coincidence.

Lee, Price & Cushing, 1982
Christopher Lee, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing—publicity shot from 1982, during the shoot for HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS.

Also, for me, a significant day for losses. On this day back in 2006, we not only lost the legendary cartoonist Alex Toth—my mother also passed away. Has it really been 18 years? Not to me. Time makes no sense these days.

A few pics of mom…
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Remembering the Two Freds

As hinted at in this post, March 14 would have been Fred (Jr)’s 20th birthday, if he was still here. He died in 2018.

Well, further to that, today would have been a big birthday for the “original” Fred, who was born on April 26 1994. Yup, the Big Three-Oh! Of course, no Westie in the long history of Westiedom ever lived to be 30, but it’s a bittersweet landmark that I wanted to note. I also plan to make a few more postings about both of the Freds in due course, 2024 being a big year for them. Below are a couple of pics of OG Fred in the meantime (I’m working on scanning many more)…

Fred July 1994
OG Fred as a pup, early July 1994.
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David Soul

I was very sorry to hear of David Soul’s passing just recently. It reminded me of back in 2020, when, halfway through watching the original (best!) James Bond movies, Sean Connery passed on. This time we were in the middle of watching the complete Starsky & Hutch series.

About that series… of course, it’s a mixed bag. It started out very, very gritty, but it seems they quickly realised with a strong younger audience they should probably dial that aspect back a bit. But never fully, which means by the third season we still get very edgy, adult episodes side-by-side with absurdly camp, jokey nonsense. At its best, Starksy & Hutch is superb—at its worst, the cheesiness is off the scale.

Starsky & Hutch
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John Romita, RIP

Thought I’d give a quick mention to John, who passed away aged 93 on June 12th. His death is no tragedy—he had a very long life, well lived—but a sad loss nonetheless, especially as the Silver Age greats of comics are dwindling rapidly now.

John was, of course, the third best Spider-Man artist.

Spider-Man 121 cvr
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Neal Adams

Really, really sad to hear about the passing of Neal Adams. I think most of us can agree that he’s a highly significant figure in comics history.

I thought Neal was sure to be around for another 10-15 years, and producing decent art more or less till the day he died. The latter is virtually true—he was working on commissions as recently as ten days ago—but sadly, he had been fighting the effects of a sepsis infection for the past 11 months. That’s a tough battle at any age.

His later work is probably the stuff that will come to mind for some folks, and that’s… well, a small part of the story!! Neal’s art, for the past 30-35 years, has been generally solid and consistent, sometimes quite beautiful, if seldom a match for his peak stuff from the late ’60s through mid-’70s. But, it might be his increasingly eccentric writing that’s gained the most attention in recent years.

Batman: Odyssey, from 2010-11, which ran for 13 issues over two mini-series, had a lot of people scratching their heads. The distinctive and occasionally stunning visuals were a given, but Neal’s writing—barely flirting with conventional structure or internal logic—made the series something of a cult item. His writing only got weirder and more esoteric later on!

Batman Odyssey 7
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I’m Back (Again)

It’s true… I struggle to update this blog regularly and have for the last decade, really. (I have a large archive of “legacy blog” postings, not currently online, which was a mixture of personal and work—going back to the year 2000!) Partly it’s because social media put a real dent in blogs—regrettably, for me, as I have always disliked so-called social media… and only real popular blogs have weathered the storm somewhat unscathed. So it’s a major disincentive to bother with a blog when you know no one bothers looking at it unless you personally prod them into doing so!

And life itself—the complications, the distractions, the tragedies, the endless quest for income and stability… it’s heavy. Who needs to blog about that or prioritise blogging to a silent or non-existent audience instead of focusing on important stuff?!
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