RANDOM STUFF | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture

Dec12

It’s My CHRISTMAS RANT and You’re Going to Listen!

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Dec 12, 2025

It’s My CHRISTMAS RANT and You’re Going to Listen!

FRANCO’s FREE-FOR-ALL FRIDAYS! By FRANCO It’s that time of year again! Time for my annual Christmas rant! Oh you didn’t know? Your ass better call somebody then! (Please don’t take offense — that’s a wrestling reference.) Also, how could you know, as this is the first Christmas rant I’m doing and also I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it. Also again, I’m not sure it’s an annual thing as I hope to maybe do one next year but then I might forget and do something else entirely. Anyway… Let’s keep things under wraps. Do you wrap presents? Do you keep your geek flag showing and wrap things in superhero wrapping or do you just use that boring paper with pictures of candy cane and stuff? Maybe make it even easier on yourself and just put your gift in a gift bag. But gosh they’re so expensive! Need a cheaper option? You can get a bunch of those brown bags from Kohl’s, or equivalent department store, and just write “Spider-Man” on it with a big giant Sharpie. (They even have colored ones now from what I hear.) Boom! You got yourself a Christmas gift bag! Cookies! Do you bake all kinds or should you just make snickerdoodles like you’re supposed to? Oh, want to complain? There’s a comment section, but it won’t do you any good, ‘cause it’s MY Christmas rant! But! If you’re the Christmas cookie kind, how about little Bat symbols with little Santa hats drawn on them with icing? And then you’ll have half-eaten cookies strewn all about the house for the next couple weeks and when Christmas finally arrives, your wife will say, “What happened to all the cookies I made?” ‘Tis that time of year, so get in the spirit! I leave you to ponder such things as how many open-mouth kisses will you get? Whose Christmas ham is better? (And I’m not necessarily talking about the food here). Which relative is going to say “Comic books? You still read those?” Or better yet, “Comic books? They still make those?” Remember, it’s all fun and games ‘til Santa checks the naughty list, but at least you still have a couple weeks to change all that. May your Christmas be as fat and jolly as Santa after eating too many cookies! Happy Friday! — Want...

Dec01

Dig These 13 Fab BATMAN MODEL KITS From the ’60s to the ’90s

Posted by Dan Greenfield on Dec 1, 2025

Dig These 13 Fab BATMAN MODEL KITS From the ’60s to the ’90s

MORRISON MONDAYS meets TOYHEM! — Welcome to TOYHEM! For the seventh straight holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays! — Dan — By BILL MORRISON I was born into the Golden Age of comic-book and comic-strip character figurines. Of course, such shelf-sitting totems have existed nearly since the advent of comics themselves, but graven images of our favorite characters really proliferated in the latter half of the 20th century with dress-up dolls, action figures, statues, and of course, model kits. I love all those things, but models are my favorite type of figurine because you don’t just take them out of the package and put them on display, you make them! As a kid in the 1960s who was starting to think about the possibility of a career as an artist someday, I was lured by the seductive box art of model kits, and then engaged creatively by the process of painting the parts and gluing them together to create a figure. Sure, I had fun playing with my Captain Action dolls, but assembling those Aurora kits got me really excited. And it wasn’t just due to the toxic airplane glue. Though I loved the Aurora monster models and had nearly every one of them as a kid, I was a major Batmaniac and my favorite model kits were naturally those of the Bat-variety. Aurora Plastics Corp. produced seven Batman-related assembly kits between 1964 and 1967, and all of them are on my list of favorite Bat-models from over the years. But since this is 13thDimension, I’m adding six more to bring my list of faves to a full baker’s dozen! — 1. Batman. In 1964, Aurora produced a Superman “All Plastic Assembly Kit,” and though they had no idea a phenomenon known as “Batmania” would infect the world in just two years, they also came out with a Batman kit. The “New Look” for Batman that was introduced in Detective Comics #327 was still very, well, new. So, the cool, modern Carmine Infantino/Murphy Anderson box art seems like an odd choice, especially when you consider that much of the later...

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