MAD About Tom

The votes have been counted. The winner of the Reuben Award for Cartoonist of the Year in 2011 is -- drum roll -- MAD Magazine's Tom Richmond. Congratulations, Tom!

Stephan Pastis, having been nominated for the award  five times in a row, still has a way to go to match actress Susan Lucci's eighteen nominations for the Daytime Emmy Award before she finally won.. We're rooting for you, Stephan!

Click here for a list of the other categories and the winners.

Green Lantern Fans, Assemble!

As a lifelong Green Lantern fan, I find this product very cool. As a teenager, I purchased an Aurora Superman model kit in a discount hobby shop for one dollar, and converted it into a Green Lantern figure, using a knife and sandpaper to remove the spitcurl, belt, and boots, and putty to plug up the holes in the shoulders where the cape was supposed to attach. It started me on a model-kit kick, and over a couple of years I converted two other Superman kits into Hawkman and Adam Strange, two Superboy kits into the Flash and Black Lightning, and a Tarzan kit into the super-villain Kobra.

This kit is much cooler, with its transparent plastic power-ring hand and mid-air flying pose. I wish that it had been around back then. It costs almost 25 times what I paid for my discounted Superman kit, but hey, that was more than 35 years ago. Prices go up.

It's made by a company called Moebius Models, which manufactures a whole line of science fiction model kits and products. Check out their website.

I still have one unassembled Superman model kit left. It isn't in the original box, but all the parts are there. I really ought to turn it into something one of these days...


On a slightly different subject, I was just looking at the stats for this blog. Among the search terms that have brought people here, I found (twice) the phrase Green Lather Showcase comic. Should I be foaming at the mouth?