DEAGOSTINI THUNDERBIRDS MONOBRAKE

BEWARE THE HORLA

I caught up with yet another 'old fiend' the other day, one which I first saw in one of my Famous Monsters magazines back in the early Seventies. I still have that magazine although its oddly coverless. It may always have been as I got a lot of horror comics and mags from a brilliant second hand comics stall on Preston outdoor Market. I can still see the seller now. He reminded me of McGill in Man in a Suitcase. I've been collecting horror comics and monster books ever since.

The 'old fiend' is the film Diary of a Madman starring the prince of horror Vincent Price. It concerns a French magistrate, grieving for the loss of his wife. Into his life breezes a young lady who poses for his re-discovered sculpting. Amidst all of this blossoming romance are the Horla, evil presences from another dimension, hell-bent on driving Vincenzo to heinous acts. I won't spoil anything and leave it there in case you wish to read this particular deranged diary.

The story was by Guy de Maupassant and there is an excellent resume of his ghostly tales on Darkworlds http://darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org/the-diary-of-a-madman-the-horror-stories-of-guy-de-maupassant/

I still have many more old monster chums to watch, first seen in Famous Monsters and my horror guides by Dennis Gifford and Alan Frank and never actually viewed.

One day I will have seen them all but till then ...

DEAGOSTINI THUNDERBIRDS FIREFLY

THE SILVER KING RIDES AGAIN!

Reader Terranova47's Silver King rides the Northern Heights again.

Greetings from the ManCave

Well its an exciting time here on Marsbase as due to a recent reshuffling of personnel, I have finally been able to take over a small cabin all to myself. Its compact, but rather than having to occupy a corner of a larger living space, I can now spread out a little more and organise things a little better. Its been a timely move, as my vintage space library has been expanding. Only by a couple of items and small ones at that, in fact one of them is one of the smallest books in the library!

'Secrets of Space' is part of the Bancroft Tiddlers range, published in 1967 as part of a line of about 40+ pocket sized books for children. All the usual topics were covered, Ships, Dinosaurs, Cars and other less usual fare such as Oil, Coins and Famous Churches. Each book is tiny, less than 3" wide and composed of 32 pages, illustrated with either a full page illustration, or a diagram, with a page of explanatory text. 

Compared with a contemporary pocket sized book, an Observers Guide, a Tiddler is tiny, but they are interesting fare and very much of their time. Depicting current and recent space probes and the projected Apollo Saturn Rocket, its always rewarding to look at how these early books portray future developments in space travel. Secrets of Space is no exception, with a rather nice illustration of an Orbital Space Glider near the end.

By contrast the Patterson Blick Instant Picture Book 'Outer Space' is a larger publication, similar to the Letraset Transfer books.

Although larger format, Outer Space only has 14 pages, with the centre devoted to a panorama for the buyer to apply the set of included transfers. Obviously, being a second hand book from 1972, these have been applied and some have deteriorated with time. There's nothing remarkable in terms of the choice of imagery - several LEMs, Apollo's, Saturn rockets and various astronauts together with a stray Ariel satellite, a Gemini Titan and a large Von Braun Moonship. The sister publication to this is the Dennis Knight book 'Space Flight' (see: https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2020/07/lockdown-library.html) which follows a similar theme some five years later.

I had this book as a child, but it has not survived the rigours of time as well as some others and has been discarded along the way, but my favourite pages were always the last two, which showed a futuristic station and approaching cruiser and the enigmatic illustration of the tentacular martians from War of the Worlds.

 Its always interesting to look at old space books, both to see how vastly different the expected developments were, but also just to look 'back' on how things might have been. 

SCRAPBOX BATCAVE

My Missus has just finished making this scrapbox Batcave for Moonbase Junior. Its got tubes and slides and even a Batbed for his figures! I'm pretty sure he's going to love it. Junior too!

What do you think?

DEAGOSTINI THUNDERBIRDS TRANSMITTER TRUCK

Rob's Aoshima Ginga Procyon Kit

Woodsy,

Here is a model I built almost ten years ago (and may have even sent you way back when), but I decided to take new pictures of it and send them along, because I discovered, thanks to another Moonbase reader, that it is actually a part of that Red Hawk Yamato series by Aoshima.

This one is called the Ginga Procyon (what that means I have no idea), and as you can see, it’s a souped-up flying race car with machine gun turrets. Another very pretty, very impossible vehicle. Enjoy!

Rob C

USA