Some new works, many more on the way

Mystery of the man in a jetpack at 3000 feet (then at 6000!) near LAX

For those who check my blog sometimes, I want to share this bit of news, which perhaps you haven't heard of yet: on Sunday, August 30th, at least two airline pilot teams reported seeing a man flying in a jet pack about 3000 feet up in the air near LAX in restricted flying space; that is higher than any known jetpack flight; the man has not been identified yet and has not come forward; the FBI is investigating. They are also asking anyone in the public to come forward with more information. So readers, take note of the very extraordinary nature of this incident: this guy just may have been flying new technology, and instead of revealing that tech to the media in an official unveiling, he suddenly appears at 3000 feet, violating serious laws of airspace and traffic control. Nor is it the M.O. of a spy: nope. It's the M.O. of a UFO, or Spring-Heeled Jack. Which is why I have given this guy the name "Jetpack Jack". He just might be the 21st century version of Spring-Heeled Jack. He's also quite reminiscent of the usual comic book plot: it's in the comic books where new technology is so often first unveiled in such ways, by either an inventor who's about to become a superhero or---preparing for his first big heist. Or a variation thereof. So I've come up with a name for this guy; which I first mentioned via text on September 1st or 2nd (I have the original texts which verify that, in case some jack tries to jack my Jetpack Jack). What will the FBI uncover about Jetpack Jack? Will they uncover Jack? If they had Agent Mulder on the team, I'm sure they'd get farther with this case. Till then, keep your eyes on the skies.

Update, October 14th: the Jetpack Man was sighted by some airline crews again on Wednesday October 14th at about 2:00pm, again above L.A., this time at 6000 feet high. The situation is still a mystery to the authorities.

The GPK days

Back in the 80s, Garbage Pail Kids used to be so great, with art by John Pound and Tom Bunk and James Warhola at their GPK best, as well as other artists involved, like Jay Lynch. All great gags as well, with most of the gags/concepts coming from the duo of Mark Newgarden and Art Spiegelman (and we've seen what happened to the later Garbage Pail Kids without that duo involved). 25 cents a pack, unless an ice cream truck guy or mini-market guy jacked up the price to 35 cents or 40 cents...a stick of bubble gum also in the wax pack, and though it was often hard and brittle, we chewed it happily with plenty of gusto (gusto more from the imagination, on those occasions), so I remember... that fantastic mysterious atmosphere the 1980s GPKs had, which captured many of the great essences of the 1980s, especially maybe of Autumn days in Los Angeles and New York and elsewhere...good thing I collected almost a complete collection by 1990 or 1991...an Original Series collection which I completed in 2011...

It will be an enduring mystery for historians as to why Topps stopped making GPK in 1989, especially when they already had the 16th series already made and ready to go. Sure, they weren't selling like they were in 85 and 86 and 87, but I'm sure they would've still made a fat profit. The real reason that Topps discontinued GPK in 1989 is because the higher ups (the bosses of the art directors/gag-writers) at Topps were morons; it was an early example of Topps going moron on us; more than declining sales, the reason they stopped making GPK seems to have been the bad PR and flak they were still getting from parents because of Garbage Pail Kids: they got worried that it would impact their sports cards sales, though it's beyond me why anyone would collect any of those tinkerbell/fairy baseball cards.

Then a few years after they discontinued GPK, a most perplexing thing happened: Topps put out the Trash Can Trolls set, a sticker release which few people/few kids/few youngsters were aware of at the time of its release/and in the year after its release/ or the year after that (most found out about that set many years after it was out of print). I don't recall it, though maybe I saw a few packs hanging inside an ice cream truck. Now, the Trash Can Trolls set is greatly made, by the original GPK team; and parodying something more current like those Trolls toys was not a bad idea; but discontinuing Garbage Pail Kids and thinking that Trash Can Trolls would sell better? Ha ha, stupid motherf**ers at the company, No (not referring to the great team that actually made Trash Can Trolls, I mean the higher ups). Didn't and couldn't happen. You should've continued making Garbage Pail Kids, on a smaller scale if need be. The early 90s and even the late 80s were full of card set releases that got by well enough on modest sales and which weren't expected to be giant hits. So I don't know what the F was up with their discontinuing of GPK.

The new GPKs have only fractions of what the 80s ones had (aside from the occasional brilliantly executed new GPK; and by now also, most have realized that All-New Series 1 through 7 are better than most or all of the series made after 2011) , but that was enough for me to buy the new ones for awhile, as I did from 2011 to near the end of 2015. Though I didn't buy the new GPK to the extent that some do...even if I had the money I wouldn't...

For various reasons, though I knew about All-New Series I think as early as when they were first coming out, for various reasons no longer clear to me, I did not buy any All-New Series until years after they were no longer being printed (in 2011 I bought my first All-New Series GPK from eBay).

I may or may not resume buying the latest Garbage Pail Kids series releases. I stopped buying those towards the end of 2015. I suppose eventually I will resume buying some of the newer series, but I will begin with more recent ones, rather than with those that were put out from the last months of 2015 to late 2017 or so: the themed sets were/are a bad idea; the themed subsets were okay; but I stopped collecting as soon as I saw fully themed sets announced in late 2015; though towards the end they actually had a few good theme ideas (I'm thinking of the 80s homage/parody theme and the 90s homage/parody theme; those two are the ones I'm most interested in from the pre-New Art Director era).

I just found out (after I posted the earlier version of this post) that since sometime in July 2018, the GPK have a new art director, which is exciting news, the most exciting GPK news since the first GPK Abrams book was announced. There has been little GPK news to get excited about since the end of 2014 (a big exception being the GPK documentary from a years ago, which I almost forgot about!). But as I think about it more, seeing as how the great Original Series GPK artists are no longer contributing, and since the nature of collecting the new GPK is so different from the original series, and since the final product still doesn't look how it should look (it should look a lot more like the original Series!, or at least like the best of All-New Series), I'm not much excited. Just somewhat excited, imagining What If...I might even try to get my GPK work seen again (I haven't tried that since 2012) but I'm going to go about it in a different way this time, instead of going directly to Topps emails. Not that I did anything wrong the first time, they're the ones who messed up. I was trying to help them out! ☺