Cadet
News - 2001
TOBOR
LOST:
From Cadet Bob Burns. Bob has an excellent book out that all SF fans
will enjoy IT CAME FROM BOB'S BASEMENT. See Solar
Guard library for details.
Thanks to Space Ranger Mike Elmo for passing along the story of
Tobor to the Academy.
I just looked at the Solar
Guard site and saw they were asking questions about what ever happened
to Tobor. I can shed some light on that subject.
The TOBOR story is sad for
me. Years ago I read in the paper about this thrift shop dealer
that ended up with TOBOR. He bought a whole batch of stuff from
a storage place and one of the big crates contained TOBOR.
I went over to see it and
if he would sell it and he said the first person to come up with
$1000.00 could have it. I was there on a Friday. I told him I'd
take it and Kathy and I begged, borrowed, etc., and got the money.
I called him and we decided that I would pick TOBOR up on the next
Monday. I rented a truck and we went over and the guy said "You're
not going to believe this but it was stolen over the weekend on
Sunday." I was stunned.
One thing that bothered me was he didn't seem very upset about losing
a $1000.00 sale. Another thing was that TOBOR was made out of metal
and was in a very large wooden crate that was over 9 feet long and
very heavy (I took 4 big guys with me to pick it up to get it in
the truck). It would have been very hard to get that out of his
place without someone seeing it. That along with him not being upset
about losing the sale didn't make sense to me.
Later, I heard that he had insured it for around $10,000. You can
draw your own conclusions from that. I never heard what he actually
settled for but I would think he did pretty well. In any case, I
lost TOBOR much to my sorrow. There is my very sad story of how
I bought and lost TOBOR the Great.
I'm not sure who actually built the robot. I do know that Howard
Lydecker was the special effects man on the film (being Republic).
My guess is that he had it made by some metal shop. Obviously, they
stored it in a storage place and forgot about it for many years
and when the storage place found it they just sold it off to the
highest bidder which happened to be this thrift shop guy. I know
he didn't pay much for it though. He said he got 5 or 6 crates and
boxes for a couple hundred bucks. I've never heard to this day what
ever happened to TOBOR. As far as I know he's never showed up anywhere.
There you have it. Feel free
to post this on the Solar Guard board if you want. The TOBOR event
happened in 1965, and I'm still sad about it. TOBOR would have been
a nice addition to the museum. Take Care, Bob.
ED KEMMER REMEMBERED?
From Cadet Jeff Berkwits:
Hi All,
I thought you all might enjoy this little bit of trivia... My wife
and I were watching HBO (Friday 12/21/01), and saw the new remake
of "Earth vs. The Spider" (part of the "Creature
Features" series of "re-inventions" of old AIP pictures).
It really has nothing to do with the original sci-fi film - this
one is more "The Fly" meets "Spider-Man" with
a horror feel. Plus, one of the stars is Dan Aykroyd, which is scary
in and of itself.
Anyhow, as we all know, Ed
Kemmer starred in the original 1958 picture, but the fun thing about
this one is that the main character here is a 23-year-old kid named
Quentin Kemmer! Ed may not be acting anymore, but his name,
at least, lives on.
DAVID VS GOLIATH
DC Comics Threatens Bruce David's SundayComicsOnline.com Website
A cease and desist letter
has been sent to Charles Bruce David, publisher of the SundayComicsOnline.com
website which features comics and articles about comics and the
comics industry. The letter demands the removal of an article about
how Superman's powers might be explained by new scientific understandings
in the field of quantum physics. David, believing that he is fully
protected under "fair comment" usage, has passed the DC
letter on to his Beverly Hills attorney, Benjamin Pesta. David believes
there may be far more to this than meets the eye because Link Yaco,
author of the Science of Superman, the web article that got DC's
attention, says he originally pitched the concept to DC as a book.
Yaco claims that DC accepted the project but after stalling him
for months, reassigned it to Byron Preiss, cutting Yaco out completely
while offering nothing in the way of compensation. This was when
Yaco queried SundayComicsOnline.com about their interest in the
piece. David, who knew nothing about the dispute between Yaco and
DC, immediately posted the article at: http://www.sundaycomicsonline.com/thescien.htm
SundayComicsOnline.com has
been publishing on the web since January 2000. Conceptually it is
designed to fill the void created by the rapidly shrinking Sunday
comics in today's newspapers. "Because of the premium put on
advertising space," David says, "the adventure strips
have all but vanished from the Sunday comics and the humor strips
have to play it so safe that they have become tedious. Web comics
are not bound by such constraints." Like its print counter
part, SundayComicsOnline.com
is updated every Sunday.
SundayComicsOnline.com invites the press to query all parties in
this matter.
Bruce David, Publisher, SundayComicsOnline.com: Swapsale@aol.com,
(323) 651-5400 days, (661) 775-9822 nights and weekends
Link Yaco, author, Science of Superman: Link Yaco@aol.com, Phone:
212) 989 0819
DC, Jay.Kogan@dccomics.com (JKogan0993), DC Comics 212) 636-5400
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