The Butcher Shop

When "dick" was a detective, "Poke" Bancroft earned his nickname the hard way. Some of these old comics don't translate, unless you watch old movies too. That's quite all right because some of today's won't translate to the next generation.

I love old comic books, especially free digitized comic books I find online. Once copyright is gone, sites such as aibq.com and comicbooksplus.com post them. I found old issues of Plastic Man. And I have found a series of, what for the 1940s, perverse little images. Most of these barbie-doll like women just stroll by, not part of the story at all. One even has an underwear shot--extremely risque for the 40s. And I love the looks on Woozy as he walks by and gapes at the girls.

I teach the TV show The Prisoner to my sophomores as visual literacy. You do everything exactly the same as analyzing text, but you now do it to a TV show. And The Prisoner is perfect. While watching for probably the fiftieth time the episode entitled "The Chimes of Big Ben," the sculpture interpretation scene really jumped out at me. #6 is interpreting his sculpture that he has titled "Escape." Clearly there is a hole in the sculpture that he pokes his head through, and in the back on the wall, way back, is one of those drawings of #2. This at first appears incidental but in one shot #6 has his face in the hole on one side and #2's drawn face is on the other side, as if they are looking at each other. Is this a clue to the series overall? This must have been purposely set up like this. Are the faces together to show some connection? That they can't escape? Or are at least entwined together? Fascinating.

With my new tablet comes a new account. So that means a new Butcher Shop. Geek stuff. Silly stuff. But always Butcher. I need an outlet and blogs have worked in the past. My old blog is still at mjb0123.blogspot.com so that won't change. I also still want to work on and update mymobydick.blogspot.com but can't make any promises. I will try! But this is me.