#phil francis phase one

[peninsularian]

1977, originally on a Phil Francis Phase One 12", soon to be re-released on a 7"

[collectorscorner]

CC Blogger - New Arrivals @ Collectors Corner : Wednesday - 2/10/21

CC Blogger - New Arrivals @ Collectors Corner : Wednesday 2/10/21

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PUBLISHER/TITLE/PRICE

ABLAZE Gung-Ho Sexy Beast #2 (Cover A Charlie Adlard), $3.99

AFTERSHOCK COMICS Knock Em Dead #3, $3.99 Red Atlantis #4, $3.99 Scout’s Honor #2, $3.99

AHOY COMICS Happy Hour #4, $3.99

ALBATROSS FUNNYBOOKS King Tank Girl #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Brett Parson), $3.99 King Tank Girl #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Chris Wahl Cardstock Variant), $5.99

ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS Archie And Friends Guide To Dating #1, $2.99 World Of Betty And Veronica Jumbo Comics Digest #2, $7.99

AWA STUDIOS Casual Fling #1 (Of 5)(Cover A Dani), $3.99 Casual Fling #1 (Of 5)(Cover B Mike Deodato Jr.), $3.99 E-Ratic #3 (Of 5), $3.99 Old Haunts TP, $9.99

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CLOVER PRESS Grievling TP, $14.99 Possessed TP, $17.99

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HUMANOIDS Omni Volume 2 No More Hate TP, $17.99 Space Bastards #2, $4.99

IDW PUBLISHING Comic Book History Of Animation #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Ryan Dunlavey), $3.99 Comic Book History Of Animation #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Ryan Dunlavey), $3.99 G.I. Joe A Real American Hero #278 (Cover A Dan Schoening), $3.99 G.I. Joe A Real American Hero #278 (Cover B Jamie Sullivan), $3.99 G.I. Joe A Real American Hero #278 (Cover C John Royle), AR G.I. Joe A Real American Hero Yearbook #1 (Cover A Netho Diaz), $5.99 Goosebumps Secrets Of The Swamp #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Bill Underwood), $3.99 Goosebumps Secrets Of The Swamp #5 (Of 5)(Cover B Clara Meath), AR Judge Dredd False Witness #4 (Of 4)(Cover A Kei Zama), $3.99 Judge Dredd False Witness #4 (Of 4)(Cover B Jonboy Meyers), AR Parenthesis GN, $19.99 Scarenthood #4 (Of 4)(Cover A Nick Roche), $4.99 Scarenthood #4 (Of 4)(Cover B Tara O’Connor), AR Star Trek Voyager Seven’s Reckoning #4 (Of 4)(Cover A Angel Hernandez), $3.99 Star Trek Voyager Seven’s Reckoning #4 (Of 4)(Cover B Photo), $3.99 Star Trek Voyager Seven’s Reckoning #4 (Of 4)(Cover C Jefferey Ferregge), AR Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #114 (Cover A Sophie Campbell), $3.99 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #114 (Cover B Kevin Eastman), $3.99 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #114 (Cover C Jesus Hervas), AR Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The IDW Collection Volume 12 HC, $59.99 Transformers Escape #2 (Of 5)(Cover A Bethany McGuire-Smith), $3.99 Transformers Escape #2 (Of 5)(Cover B Anna Malkova), $3.99 Transformers Escape #2 (Of 5)(Cover C Sara Pitre-Durocher), AR Transformers The IDW Collection Phase Two Volume 12 HC, $59.99

IMAGE COMICS A Man Among Ye Volume 1 TP, $14.99 Birthright #46, $3.99 Bliss #5 (Of 8), $3.99 Commanders In Crisis #5 (Of 12)(Cover A Davide Tinto), $3.99 Commanders In Crisis #5 (Of 12)(Cover B Joyce Chin), $3.99 Commanders In Crisis #5 (Of 12)(Cover C David Talaski), $3.99 Commanders In Crisis #5 (Of 12)(Cover D Trevor Von Eeden), $3.99 Haha #1 (Vanesa R. Del Rey 2nd Printing Variant Cover), $3.99 Home Sick Pilots #3 (Cover A Caspar Wijngaard), $3.99 Home Sick Pilots #3 (Cover B Paulina Ganucheau), $3.99 Home Sick Pilots #3 (Cover C Declan Shalvey), $3.99 Kick-Ass Vs Hit-Girl #4 (Of 5)(Cover A John Romita Jr.), $3.99 Kick-Ass Vs Hit-Girl #4 (Of 5)(Cover B John Romita Jr. Black & White Variant), $3.99 Lost Soldiers TP, $17.99 Low #26 (Cover A Greg Tocchini & Dave McCaig), $3.99 Low #26 (Cover B Matteo Scalera & Moreno Dinisio), $3.99 Low #26 (Cover C Andrew Robinson), $3.99 Radiant Black #1 (Cover A Michael Cho), $3.99 Radiant Black #1 (Cover B Eduardo Ferigato & Marcello Costa), $3.99 Radiant Black #1 (Cover C Blank Variant), $3.99 Radiant Black #1 (Cover D Marcello Costa), AR Radiant Black #1 (Cover E David Finch/Jimmy Reyes/Marcello Costa), AR Radiant Black #1 (Cover F Goni Montes Helmet Variant), AR Undiscovered Country #12 (Cover A Giuseppe Camuncoli), $3.99 Undiscovered Country #12 (Cover B Matteo Scalera), $3.99

MAD CAVE STUDIOS Honor And Curse #8, $3.99 Knights Of The Golden Sun #10, $3.99

MARVEL COMICS Amazing Spider-Man #56 (Mark Bagley 2nd Printing Variant Cover), $4.99 Amazing Spider-Man #59 (Cover A Mark Bagley), $3.99 Amazing Spider-Man #59 (Cover B Marcelo Ferriera), AR Amazing Spider-Man #59 (Cover C Emanuela Lupacchino Masterworks Variant), AR Amazing Spider-Man #59 (Cover D Leonel Castellani Avengers Mech Strike Variant), AR Captain America By Ta-Nehisi Coates Volume 4 All Die Young TP, $17.99 Daredevil #27 (Cover A Marco Checchetto), $3.99 Daredevil #27 (Cover B Emanuela Lupacchino Masterworks Variant), AR Disney Kingdoms Figment TP, $15.99 Eternals #2 (Cover A Esad Ribic), $3.99 Eternals #2 (Cover B Phil Jimenez), AR Eternals #2 (Cover C Jamie McKelvie), AR Eternals #2 (Cover D Todd Nauck Headshot Variant), AR Eternals #2 (Cover E Esad Ribic Design Variant), AR Excalibur #18 (Cover A Mahmud A. Asrar), $3.99 Excalibur #18 (Cover B Russell Dauterman), AR Fantastic Four #29 (Cover A Mark Brooks), $3.99 Fantastic Four #29 (Cover B Emanuela Lupacchino Masterworks Variant), AR King In Black #1 (Of 5)(Ryan Stegman 2nd Printing Variant Cover), $5.99 King In Black #2 (Of 5)(Rafa Sandoval 2nd Printing Variant Cover), $4.99 King In Black Black Panther #1 (Cover A Leinil Francis Yu), $4.99 King In Black Black Panther #1 (Cover B Steve Epting), AR King In Black Thunderbolts #2 (Of 3)(Cover A Kyle Hotz), $3.99 King In Black Thunderbolts #2 (Of 3)(Cover B Marco Checchetto), AR Morbius Bond Of Blood #1, $3.99 Morbius Epic Collection Volume 1 The Living Vampire TP, $39.99 Power Pack #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Carlos E. Gomez), $3.99 S.W.O.R.D. #3 (Cover A Valerio Schiti), $3.99 S.W.O.R.D. #3 (Cover B Takeshi Miyazawa), AR Star Wars Darth Vader #10 (Cover A Aaron Kuder), $3.99 Star Wars Darth Vader #10 (Cover B Chris Sprouse Empire Strikes Back Variant), AR Star Wars High Republic #1 (Ario Anindito 3rd Printing Variant Cover), $3.99 Taskmaster #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Valerio Giangiordano), $3.99 Taskmaster #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Alan Davis), AR Wolverine Black White And Blood #3 (Of 4)(Cover A Jorge Fornes), $4.99 Wolverine Black White And Blood #3 (Of 4)(Cover B Taurin Clarke), AR X-Factor Epic Collection Volume 1 Genesis And Apocalypse TP (New Printing), $39.99 X-Force #17, $3.99

ONI PRESS Vain #5, $3.99

SCOUT COMICS Children Of The Grave #2, $3.99 It Eats What Feeds It TP, $9.99 Recount #1 (Gabriel Ibarra Nunez 2nd Printing Variant Cover), $3.99 Stabbity Bunny Dark Origins #1, $9.99 White Ash Presents Glarien #1 (One Shot)(Cover A Romina Moranelli), $3.99 White Ash Presents Glarien #1 (One Shot)(Cover B Conor Hughes), $3.99

SCOUT COMICS – SCOOT Mapmaker #1, $1.99

TITAN COMICS Doctor Who Comics #4 (Cover A Claudia Iannicello), $3.99 Doctor Who Comics #4 (Cover B Photo), $3.99 Doctor Who Comics #4 (Cover C Christopher Jones), $3.99 Star Wars Insider #200 (Newsstand Edition), $9.99 Star Wars Insider #200 (Previews Exclusive Edition), $9.99

UNCIVILIZED COMICS Ginseng Roots #8, $6.00

VALIANT ENTERTAINMENT Rai Volume 2 TP, $14.99

VAULT COMICS Devil’s Red Bride #5 (Cover A John Bivens), $3.99 Devil’s Red Bride #5 (Cover B Tim Daniel), $3.99 Heavy #5 (Cover A Eryk Donovan), $3.99 Heavy #5 (Cover B Tim Daniel), $3.99 I Walk With Monsters #1 (Sally Cantirino 2nd Printing Variant Cover), $3.99 I Walk With Monsters #3 (Cover A Sally Cantirino), $3.99 I Walk With Monsters #3 (Cover B Jen Hickman), $3.99 Wasted Space #19, $3.99

VIZ MEDIA Pokemon Adventures Collector’s Edition Volume 6 TP, $17.99

ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT Grimm Spotlight Black Knight Vs Lord Of The Flies #1 (Cover A Igor Vitorino), $5.99 Grimm Spotlight Black Knight Vs Lord Of The Flies #1 (Cover B Canaan White), $5.99 Grimm Spotlight Black Knight Vs Lord Of The Flies #1 (Cover C Sun Khamunaki), $5.99

GAMES

KONAMI DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT Yu-Gi-Oh TCG Blazing Vortex Booster, AR

TOYS - T-SHIRTS & COLLECTIBLES Alfred Hitchcock Monster Glow ReAction Figure, AR POP Animation Simpsons Barney Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Simpsons Chief Wiggum Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Simpsons Mafia Bart Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Simpsons USA Homer Vinyl Figure, AR POP Deluxe Simpsons Homer Watching TV Vinyl Figure, AR POP Disney Raya And The Last Dragon Namaari Vinyl Figure, AR POP Disney Raya And The Last Dragon Raya Warrior Vinyl Figure, AR POP Five Nights At Freddy’s Security Breach Glamrock Chica Vinyl Figure, AR POP Five Nights At Freddy’s Security Breach Montgomery Gator Vinyl Figure, AR POP Five Nights At Freddy’s Security Breach Roxanne Wolf Vinyl Figure, AR POP Five Nights At Freddy’s Security Breach Vannie Vinyl Figure, AR POP G.I. Joe Dr Mindbender Vinyl Figure, AR POP Games Fortnite Scientist Vinyl Figure, AR POP Heroes Imperial Palace Harley Vinyl Figure, AR POP MLP Blossom Vinyl Figure, AR POP Rocks Run-DMC DMC Vinyl Figure, AR POP Rocks Run-DMC Jam Master Jay Vinyl Figure, AR POP Rocks Run-DMC Run Vinyl Figure, AR Toony Terrors Series 5 6 Inch Action Figure Assortment, AR Vinyl Soda Marvel Thanos With Chase, AR Vinyl Soda Masters Of The Universe Scare Glow With Glow In The Dark Chase, AR Vinyl Soda My Hero Academia Deku With Glow In The Dark Chase, AR Vinyl Soda Sonic With Chase, AR Vinyl Soda Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rocksteady With Chase, AR Vinyl Soda Texas Chainsaw Massacre Leatherface With Chase, AR Voltron ReAction Figure, AR

[secretradiobrooklyn]

SECRET RADIO | Sept.12.20

Secret Radio Brooklyn | 9.12.20 | Broadcast from the print shop (Hear it here.)

1. Fela Kuti - It’s Highlife Time

Such a cheery introduction to a night at the Afro Spot. There’s an elegance and restraint and Western-facing showmanship that is the exact opposite of what Fela Kuti’s music came to be, but it seems completely sincere — just a different stage of an incredibly productive life. 

2. Ros Serey Sothea - Jam 5 Kai Thiet (Wait 5 More Months) 

The guitar tones, really all the tones of this song, are so perfect, and the structure is both immaculately pop-shaped and full of gnarly rock distortion.

3. Sylvie Vartan - L’oiseau

Such a piercing chorus! It almost sounds like she’s making a birdcall, and we’ve been really appreciating bird sounds this summer in the woods.

4. Singer Nahounou and T.P. Poly Rythmo de Cotonou Benin - Gbabouo

This is a 1978 T.P. track, so they’re in their prime, with Papillon providing those amazingly beautiful guitar waterfalls. I don’t know anything about Singer Nahounou, but his vocal phrasing is a lot more like the Zimbabwean style of Hallelujah Chicken Run Band than any of the Beninese musicians they more often play with. Someone says it has “a strong Ivory Coast influence,” but I don’t know what that means. I do know that this song makes me dance, and as it goes on you can hear the musicians really stretching out and playing with the essential elements of the groove, all led by the unstoppable Bentho Gustave on bass.

5. Teddy Afro - Atse Tewodros

I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of being halfway through a feast at an Ethiopian restaurant and suddenly realizing that you’ve been loving the music the entire time. For us, that restaurant was Meskerem on South Grand, and the band was Teddy Afro. The best part, though, might be this video, in which a collection of beautiful people do the shoulder dance seemingly all over Ethiopia, in grassy fields and castle walls and city streets, in pairs and trios and teams. It’s completely mesmerizing. Meanwhile, the footage of Teddy Afro’s live show sweeps across a crowd of tens of thousands of ecstatic fans. It’s a glimpse into several worlds I know nothing about — but the music certainly seems to speak a universal language of optimism and hope. Anyone who can tell me whether I’m completely mistaken about that, please do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRC6C8bRkQQ&list=RDmAHeyKUKMBE&index=3

6. Francis Bebey - New Track

The way this song gradually coheres from thumb piano to futuristic space jam is a clinic. I could listen to Francis Bebey talk all night.

7. Manu Dibango - Groovy Flute

Our respect to Manu Dibango, who passed on March 24 of this year. He is responsible for giving the world Soul Makossa, which we in the US know as mama say mama sa mamakusa thanks to Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones. But MJ didn’t have Groovy Flute.

8. Chantal Goya - D’Abord, Dis Moi Ton Nom

This is from the Godard film Masculin Féminin. If you like this, you’re going to love the WBFF movies broadcast coming soon!

9. Brigitte Bardot - Tu Veux ou Tu Veux Pas

Sleepy Kitty does a version of this song on a 7”. This could be a great song for teaching first-year French — “You want it or you don’t” — including frank attitudes about hooking up.

10. Newen Afrobeat - Upside Down live

Chilean Fela disciples Newen Afrobeat bring their own approach to Fela Kuti’s Upside Down. You can hear how the political urgency of the original translates directly to citizens of a country on the other side of the world. I recently read one of the singers, Macarena, describe the band as a collective that exists to make music and get the word out about the Mapuche people and their mistreatment in Chile.

Like their masterpiece, Opposite People, this is another song that is enhanced by watching the performance. It’s enough to get you dancing just watching the singer wind her way around the stage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embxt0jQ8f4

11. Antoine Dougbé & T.P. Orchestre - Kovito Gbe de Towe

The arrangement of this song is just stunning to me. The little guitar licks that steal their way between the downbeats, the sick drums, the sudden disco, the arresting tone of voice, the backing vocals, the phasing guitar solo, the breakdown, and those final percussive call-and-response vocals — this track is just flat out the tops. Currently our favorite artist… which means Dougbé, who wrote the song but didn’t sing it, Melome Clement, who arranged it, Papillon on guitar (I think), the incredibly tight drums, the horn section that cuts like a knife, and this whole period of T.P. Orchestre. 

Serge Gainsbourg - Aux Armes Et Caetera 

When this recording appeared there was a freakin uproar among the French, who were scandalized that anyone would translate the French national anthem into (gasp!) reggae form.

12. Van Goose - Last Bus

Credit due to Jen Meller for telling us long ago that Van Goose was a band to be listening for. We saw them for the first time at Underwater Sunshine in Manhattan and danced so hard that when we heard their next gig was New Year’s Eve, our plans were settled. I get so lost inside this song!

 13. Stereo Total - Ringo I Love You

The first two songs that Paige heard of this band were I Love You Ono and Ringo I Love You — as far as we know, they specialize in Beatles-related songs (which is to say we know almost nothing about this band). Both of those songs are perfect expressions of themselves. 

14. 張小鳳 (Zhang Xiao Feng) - 我深深地愛上你 (Eight Days a Week)

We know nothing about this band — this track is the result of supposing that a certain thing must exist, and then finding confirmation of its existence. What a strange chordal relation to the original it has.

Harvey Danger - Authenticity

20 years ago this week King James Version came out, which was a really really big day in a really big time in my life. One fine detail I just noticed is that I lived about a mile north of Pike Street 20 years ago, and I live about a mile south of Park Slope today. Which I don’t think me-then would have hated. Anyway I’m still enjoying every damn day, modern horrorshow notwithstanding!

15. Ben Blackwell - Bury My Body at Elmwood

So many times every year where we realize how much we miss Bob Reuter — his radio show, his photographs, his writing, and more than anything the man himself — and this is a song we first heard via Bob’s Scratchy Records. 

16. Jacqueline Taïeb - 7 heures du matin

This song kind of encapsulates a lot of what I want this collection of songs to be — a crashing together of cultures that ties back to the universal elements of rock n roll. Jacqueline Taïeb is flat out the coolest.

17. Liev Tuk - Rom Sue Sue (Dance Soul Soul) 

Another entry in our James Brown shockwave studies. This is a Cambodian track from the ’60s, so presumably made around the interaction of French and American soldiers with Cambodian citizens… probably mostly in bars near bases? That’s what I picture happening, but I don’t actually know anything about it. I will say that I think Liev brings his own thing to the track, a real animal grandeur.

18. Soumitra & Mousumi Chatterjee - Urbashi Soundtrack - Jogi Jogi 

We’ve been trying to learn more about Bengali culture and language from our young neighbors in our building in Kensington. We’re kind of hoping that someone in the building recognizes this song — though it’s equally possible they would look at us like we were crazy. This is a soundtrack to a movie billed as a “thriller” — dig that ’80s keyboard movie-soundtrack solo — and Paige and I have already spent quite a bit of time theorizing, based purely on the music, what sort of movie we’ll encounter when we find it.  Also, this is a new earworm you won’t be able to shake. I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not!

19. The Fall - Shoulder Pads

The Fall is one of our very favorite bands — actually, T.P. Orchestre is the first real contender for other favorite band in years — but I’m very aware of the fact that I have pretty much always approached these songs as broadcasts from an alien culture. The decisions that Mark E. Smith made, song after song, are so completely mysterious and thrilling to me, as is the way the band composed, and for the most part they’re talking about British cultural winds that have almost nothing to do with my world. Anytime we play a song by The Fall I feel like I’m in danger of losing myself to only Fall songs for the next month. Tie me to the mast!

20.  T.P. Orchestre & Bentho Gustave - Agnon Djidjo (Tu as bon caractère)

This is the final track on Le Disque d’Or, and the melody just feels so full of importance, like something absolutely vital is being transmitted. When we were trying to keep track of songs, I referred to this song as “Benin’s Phil Collins.” Obviously not much overlap, but I do feel like the chorus has PC’s paranoid urgency. As far as Paige can tell, the lyrics are “Je suis heureux de vivre pres de toi jusqu’au le fin du monde,” which would be “I’m happy to be with you til the end of time.” We don’t know if those are the lyrics, but they certainly work for me.

21. Joanna Kulig & Marcin Masecki - Dwa Serduszka

If you haven’t seen the film Cold War, we can’t recommend it highly enough. Also, you should know that it’s devastatingly sad. But right from the opening scene, the music alone is a revelation, and the main actors are enough to make you understand that we’re only seeing a fraction of the world’s charismatic actors in the English-speaking context, o yo yo.

22. Blossom Dearie - Manhattan 

Paige has always loved this song, especially because Blossom Dearie is the piano player as well, which is something we think about with Nat King Cole but not necessarily with a singer like her. And now this song seems like a description of the empty streets of Manhattan, and it being such a strange time. Mott Street is different right now — but it’s still New York, and these buildings have been there so long, through World War II, September 11, a lunatic for pres, and now COVID-19. Sadness and optimism: “The great big city’s a wondrous toy.” 

Orchestre de la Paillotte - Kadia Blues

A Guinean band created to promote Guinean music.

23. Scott Walker - Duchess

A pandemic discovery for Paige. I always meant to get into Scott Walker. I was in a band in Chicago and the guy whose house we practiced at loved Scott Walker. He kinda looked like Scott Walker. He was living in the ‘60s. He had a word processor. I didn’t get into Scott Walker then, nor 10 years later, but over the last year his music landed, at some point between now and the beginning of the pandemic. 

24. Inga - Silver Moon 

So weird that this song has been translated from English into German… but they use phrases in English that do not exist in the original. I really want to know more about the circumstances of this translation and arrangement. Inga was a German pop star with excellent eye makeup game.

25. Avolonto Honore - Na Do Sê Kpon Wê

The word “elegiac” exists for occasions such as this. The song feels so sincere, whether with regret, loss, love, or bitter experience. It also sounds like the voice of a father to his son, at whatever age. He sounds wise. 

[renaroo]

RenaRoo’s GIANT Comic Sale!

I am preparing for a giant move and as a result I need to majorly cut down on my physical comic books!!!

Followers and friends will have access to a Giveaway of single issues in a week, but right now I need to sell a LOT of trade volumes I am offering to sell at SUPER REDUCED prices! 

If you are interested, please look below! And contact me for information on how to pay/get shipped to!

If you are interested in haggling/buying multiple comic collections and want to make a bundle deal, I’ll be more than happy to work with you! For me the main objective right now is to ship as many things out as I can before I move November 15th!!!

Payments will be processed through PayPal and Ko-Fi!

NEW DEALS!!!

Paperback Comics - $10 + shipping BUY ONE GET ONE FREE

Batman and the Outsiders Vol. 1: The Chysalis by Chuck Dixon, Julian Lopez, Carlos Rodriguez, and Bit

Batman and the Outsiders Vol. 2: The Snare by Chuck Dixon, Carlos Rodriguez, Julian Lopez, and Ryan Benjamin

Batman and Robin: Dark Knight vs. White Knight by Paul Cornell, Scott McDaniel, Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Judd Winick, and Greg Tocchini

Batman New Gotham Vol. 1: Evolution by Greg Rucka, Shawn Martinbrough, John Watkiss, William Rosado, Phil Hester, and Steve Mitchell

Batman: Birth of the Demon by Mike W. Barr, Dennis O’Neil, Jerry Bingham, Tom Grindberg, and Norm Breyfogle

Batman: Streets of Gotham Vol. 2: Leviathan by Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs, Mike Benson, and Chris Yost

Batman: Streets of Gotham Vol. 3: The House of Hush by Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs

Batman: The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul by Grant Morrison and Paul Dini

Bedlam Vol. 1 by Nick Spencer, Riley Rossmo, and Frazer Irving

Ghost/Batgirl by Mike Kennedy and Ryan Benjamin

Lazarus Volume One by Greg Rucka, Michael Lark, and Arcas

Nightwing Vol. 5: The Hunt for Oracle by Chuck Dixon, Greg Land, Patrick Zicher, and Butch Guice

Nightwing Vol. 6: Big Guns by Chuck Dixon, Greg Land, and Mike Collins

Nightwing Vol. 7: On the Razor’s Edge by Chuck Dixon, Greg Land, and Drew Geraci

Secret Six Vol. 3: Danse Macabre by Gail Simone, John Ostrander, and J. Calafiore

Secret Six Vol. 5: The Darkest House by Gail Simone and J. Calafiore

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1: Change is Constant by Tom Waltz, Dan Duncan, and Kevin Eastman

Transformers Regeneration One Vol. 1 by Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman

Transformers Regeneration One Vol. 2 by Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman

Villains United by Gail Simone, Dale Eaglesham and Val Semeiks

Large Books - $15 + shipping BUY ONE GET ONE FREE

Batman: Cataclysm

Batman: Dark Victory by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

Batman: The Black Mirror by Scott Snyder, Jock, and Francesco Francavilla

Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale

Spider-Man: Birth of Venom by Jim Shooter, Tom DeFalco, John Byrne, Louise Simonson, and David Michelinie

Transformers: Phase One Omnibus Volume 1 by Simon Furman and E.J. Su

The Usagi Yojimbo Saga Book 2: Grasscutter by Stan Sakai

Collection Deals

52 Bundle - $15 + shipping + TWO FREE CHOICE

52 Volume One by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen 52 Volume Two by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen 52 Volume Three by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen 52 Volume Four by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen

Deadpool by Daniel Way Bundle - $50 + shipping +TWO FREE CHOICE

Deadpool: Suicide Kings by Mke Benson, Adam Glass, Carlo Barberi, and Shawn Crystal Deadpool Vol. 1: Secret Invasion by Daniel Way, Paco Medina, and Carlo Barberi Deadpool Vol. 2: Dark Reign by Daniel Way and Paco Medina Dark Reign: Deadpool/Thunderbolts by Andy Diggle, Daniel Way, Bong Dazo, and Paco Medina Deadpool Vol. 3: X Marks the Spot by Daniel Way, Shawn Crystal, Paco Medina Hardback Deadpool Vol. 4: Monkey Business by Daniel Way, Carlo Barberi, Dalibor Talajić Deadpool Vol. 5: What Happened in Vegas by Daniel Way and Carlo Barberi Deadpool Vol. 6: I Rule, You Suck by Daniel Way, Carlo Barberi, and Bongo Dazo Hardback Deadpool Vol. 7: Space Oddity by Daniel Way, Sheldon Vella, Carlo Barberi, and Bong Dazo Hardback Deadpool Vol. 8: Operation Annihilation by Daniel Way, Sheldon Vella, Bong Dazo Hardback Deadpool Vol. 9: Institutionalized by Daniel Way, Carlo Barberi Hardback Deadpool Vol. 10: Evil Deadpool by Daniel Way, Salva Espin, and John McCrea

Demon Knights Bundle - $15 + shipping + ONE FREE CHOICE

Demon Knights Vol. 1: Seven Against the Dark by Paul Cornell, Diogenes Neves, and Oclair Albert Demon Knights Vol. 2: The Avalon Trap by Paul Cornell, Diógenes Neves, and Bernard Chang Demon Knights Vol. 3: The Gathering Storm by Robert Venditti, Bernard Chang, and Paul Cornell

Full Metal Alchemist Bundle - $75 + shipping + TWO FREE CHOICE

Single Trade Volumes: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 3-in-1 Trade Volumes: Volumes 4-5-6, Volumes 7-8-9, Volumes 10-11-12, Volumes 13-14-15, Volumes 16-17-18, Volumes 19-20-21, Volumes 22-23-24, Volumes 25-26-27 Fullmetal Alchemist Profiles by Hiromu Arakawa (contains bonus manga material) The Art of Fullmetal Alcehmist Volume 2 by Hiromu Arakawa

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Bundle - $30 + Shipping + TWO FREE CHOICE

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 2 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 5 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 2 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics Vol. 3

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Manga and Pocket Sized Volumes - $10 + shipping

DC Comics

The Untold Legend of the Batman by Len Wein, John Byrne, and Jim Aparo B&W SOLD

Dark Horse

Usagi Yojimbo Book 1: The Ronin by Stan Sakai SOLD

Usagi Yojimbo Book 2: Samurai by Stan Sakai SOLD

Paperbacked Deals - #15 + shipping

DC Comics

Batman: Contagion by Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, Dennis O’Neil, Doug Moench, and Christopher Priest SOLD

Batman: Hush by Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee, and Scott Williams SOLD

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert SOLD

Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III SOLD

Birds of Prey: Blood and Circuits by Gail Simone, Nicola Scott, Paulo Siqueira, James Raiz SOLD

Birds of Prey: Sensei & Student by Gail Simone, Ed Benes, Michael Golden, Joe Bennett, Cliff Richards, Alex Lei, Ruy Jose, Mike Manley, and Scott Hanna SOLD

JLA: World Without Grown-Ups by Todd Dezago, Humberto Ramos, Mike McKone, and Todd Nauck SOLD

JLA/The Titans: The Technis Imperative by Devin Grayson, Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning, and Dexter Vines SOLD

Power Girl Vol. 1: A New Beginning by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Conner SOLD

Red Hood: The Lost Days by Judd Winick SOLD

Robin: A Hero Reborn by Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, Steve Mitchell, Chuck Dixon, Tom Lyle, and Bob Smith SOLD

Robin: Violent Tendencies by Chuck Dixon, Chris Barista, Cam Smith SOLD

Supergirl: Bizarrogirl by Sterling Gates, Jamal Igle, and Jon Sibal SOLD

Superman: Last Son of Krypton by Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, Adam Kubert, and Gary Frank SOLD

Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen SOLD

Superman: Shadows Linger by Kurt Busiek, Peter Vale, Jesús Merino, and Renato Guedes SOLD

Superman: Up, Up and Away! by Kurt Busiek, Geoff Johns, Pete Woods, and Renato Guedes SOLD

Teen Titans Vol. 4: The Future is Now by Geoff Johns, Mike McKone, Ivan Reis, and Tom Grummett SOLD

Teen Titans: Year One by Amy Wolfram, Karl Kerschl, and Serge Lapointe SOLD

Vixen: Return of the Lion by G. Willow Wilson and Cafu SOLD

Young Justice: Sins of Youth by Peter David, Karl Kesel, Todd Nauck, et. al SOLD

IDW

Image

Marvel

The Amazing Spider-Man: Unintended Consequences by J. Michael Straczynski, John Romita Jr., and Scott Hanna SOLD

Spider-Men by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli SOLD

White Tiger by Tamora Pierce and Timothy Liebe SOLD

Others

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Tony Lee, Cliff Richards, Jane Austen, and Seth Grahame-Smith SOLD

Hardbacked Deals - $20 + shipping

DC Comics

Teen Titans Earth One Volume One by Jeff Lemire, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, Cam Smith, Brad Anderson SOLD

Marvel 

Hawkeye Vol. 1 by Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido, Steve Lieber, Jesse Hamm, Francesco Francavilla, Matt Hollingsworth SOLD

Omnibus Deals - $25 + shipping

Dark Horse

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Batgirl/Robin: Year One by Scott Beatty, Chuck Dixon, Marcos Martin, and Javier Pulido SOLD

DC Comics: The Sequential Art of Amanda Conner SOLD

DC Showcase Presents: Batman Volume 4 SOLD

Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid, Leinil Francis Yu, and Gerry Alanguilan SOLD

IDW

Collection Deals

The All New Atom Bundle - $25 + shipping SOLD

The All New Atom: My Life in Miniature by Gail Simone, John Byrne, Eddy Barrows, and Trevor Scott The All New Atom: Future/Past by Gail Simone, Mike Norton, and Eddy Barrows The All New Atom: The Hunt for Ray Palmer! by Gail Simone and Mike Norton The All New Atom: Small Wonder by Rick Remender, Gail Simone, Pat Olliffe, and Mike Norton

Catwoman by Ed Brubaker Bundle - $50 + shipping SOLD

Catwoman Vol. 1: Trail of the Catwoman by Darwyn Cooke and Ed Brubaker

Catwoman Vol. 2: No Easy Way Down by Ed Brubaker and Cameron Stewart

Catwoman Vol. 3: Under Pressure by Ed Brubaker, Paul Gulacy, and Jimmy Palmiotti

Saga Collection - $50 + shipping SOLD

Saga Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples 

Spider-Girl Bundle - $50 + Shipping SOLD

Spider-Girl by Todd DeFalco, Pat Olliffe, and Al Williamson Spider-Girl Vol. 2: Like Father, Like Daughter by Tom DeFalco and Pat Olliffe Spider-Girl Vol. 5: Endgame by Tom DeFalco and Pat Olliffe Spider-Girl Vol. 6:Too Many Spiders! by Tom DeFalco, Pat Olliffe, and Ron Frenz Spider-Girl Vol. 9:Secret Lives by Tom DeFalco, Pat Olliffe, and Ron Frenz Spider-Girl Vol. 10:Season of the Serpent by Tom DeFalco, Pat Olliffe, and Ron Frenz Spider-Girl Vol. 11:Marked for Death by Tom DeFalco, Pat Olliffe, and Ron Frenz

The Amazing Spider-Girl Vol. 3: Mind Games by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz The Amazing Spider-Girl Vol. 4: Brand New May by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz The Amazing Spider-Girl Vol. 5: Maybreak by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz

[pamphletstoinspire]

The State of the Catholic Church Today --Celibacy and the Married State

A CALL FOR RENEWED EMPHASIS ON THE CELIBATE VOCATION

Generally speaking, there are two principal vocations in the life of the Catholic Church: marriage on the one hand, and celibate priesthood and religious life on the other. Both are expressions of conjugal love. In the normal calling of marriage, an individual binds himself for life to another human being. In the exceptional calling of priesthood or religious life, an individual binds himself eternally to God.

The fruitful life of the Church has always depended upon a healthy interaction between these two states of life. In truly Catholic periods or cultures, an equilibrium has been established, whereby the family bears children, some of whom are called to religion, and religious life in turn justifies and sanctifies the family. In Willa Cather’s Shadows on the Rock, a novel about Catholic Quebec in the seventeenth century, a young domestic heroine’s love of order and cleanliness is such that she can’t sleep in a dirty bed. She is balanced in the world of the novel by a beautiful ascetic in a church in Montreal, walled up behind the Blessed Sacrament with a stone for a pillow. Like the French ships that convey to the Canadian colonies “everything to comfort the body and the soul,” the capacious hold of the Church enfolds both vocations. Neither Shaker nor Protestant, the Church affirms both women’s choices, just as the young heroine of the novel is enamored of her alter ego in Montreal, and the recluse, in her turn, prays for her brothers and sisters in the world, night and day.

Still, this mutual dependency and reciprocal respect notwithstanding, in the whole history of the Church the choice for celibacy has always been understood to be objectively higher than the choice for marriage, because the celibate anticipates in his flesh the world of the future resurrection. Rather than pass through the intermediate state of earthly marriage, the priest or religious steps outside the bounds of ordinary life and begins to live, in advance, the nuptial realities of heaven.

Contrary to popular impressions, the documents of Vatican II did not break with this traditional understanding. The same documents that resoundingly affirm marriage continue to assign to celibacy an “eminent” position, one “always . . . held in particular honor in the Church.” In the language of Lumen Gentium, the religious, by his profession, seeks “more abundant fruit” from the grace of his baptism, is “more intimately consecrated to divine service,” and “more fully manifests to all believers the presence of heavenly goods already possessed here below.” In St. John Chrysostom’s formulation, “It is something better than what is admitted to be good that is the most excellent good,” a conclusion echoed by John Paul II. “Virginity, or celibacy, by liberating the human heart in a unique way,” he writes in the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, “bears witness that the Kingdom of God . . . is that pearl of great price which is preferred to every other value no matter how great.”

Put another way, the Catholic view of human life and history is never circular but always teleological, always “straining forward,” in the words of St. Paul, “to what lies ahead” (Phil. 3:13). Catholic family life is not ordered to itself, but to what is future and ultimate: life with God and his saints in heaven. Catholic families do not bear children simply so that their children may bear children, and so on. They bear children for God. As Hans Urs von Balthasar explained, for people like St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, all of whose living children ended their lives as religious, “It would be just as senseless and unchristian for a family to be shut in upon itself as for a believer in the Old Testament to reject its fulfillment in the New.”

Few families in the history of the Church have risen to the level of the Martins in this regard. But whether acted upon or not, whether explicit or implicit, there was a consensus in Christendom as to the direction and meaning of human life. When mortality was high and childbearing dangerous, when there was no Viagra or estrogen therapy, there were few illusions about the duration of either sexuality or marriage, and there was a general acknowledgment that, soon enough, everyone would be obedient, celibate, and poor. While the vast majority of people in those days chose marriage in the first place, if they outlived their spouse they were less likely than our contemporaries to choose marriage again. Even before death intervened, a small minority of spouses separated by mutual agreement and entered monasteries. Many more widows and widowers did the same. Marriage was not regarded as a treadmill to be endlessly resumed, but as a passing phase of life, even as everyone, married or not, was passing from earth to heaven, where “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matt. 22:30).

In the view of St. Ignatius, marriage was so provisional a state that it was scarcely deserving of a vow, for “it must be remembered that a vow deals with matters that lead us closer to evangelical perfection. Hence, whatever tends to withdraw one from perfection may not be made the object of a vow, for example, a business career, the married state, and so forth.” If we bristle at this seemingly low view of marriage, we might remember that in Ignatius’s day most marriages lasted until death, suggesting that what holds a marriage together more effectively than a promise or vow is the larger faith tradition in which an individual marriage is embedded.

The great novel of this view of human life is ­Kristin Lavransdatter, a three-volume saga of medieval Norway by Sigrid Undset. Late in the novel, when the widowed heroine is settled in a monastery after many years in the world, she ponders the sisterhood she has finally joined:

When, after this hour of prayer, Kristin went back through the dormitory and saw the sisters sleeping two and two on sacks of straw in the beds, clad in the habits which they never put off, she thought how much unlike she must be to these women, who from their youth up had done naught but serve their Maker. The world was a master whom ’twas not easy to fly, when once one had yielded to its dominion. Ay, and in sooth she had not fled the world—she had been cast out, as a hard master drives a worn-out servant from his door—and now she had been taken in here, as a merciful lord takes in an old serving-maid and of his mercy gives her a little work, while he shelters and feeds the worn-out, friendless old creature.

Of course, in the view of the human community, intent on its own ­survival, it is one thing when an old ­person leaves the world for religion, and quite another when a young person, and someone’s heir, does the same. In the abstract or the case of someone else’s child, Christendom conceded the superiority of celibacy, but when the Franciscans or Dominicans came to town families famously locked up their sons. Humanity is ordered to fecundity, and Nature fights for her rights, “pleads her cause with prodigious eloquence, with a terrible power of seduction.” Like the ­Israelites in the Old Testament who insisted on a visible king (1 Sam. 8), Nature demands physical intercourse and blood heirs, and fiercely resists any prioritizing of God over human beings or future over earthly goods. Thus even the most saintly celibates, in their youth, met with scandalized resistance and hostility.

It is easy to forget, for example, now that St. Thérèse’s cult is secure, what the neighbors were thinking and saying as, one after another, the Martin girls left their widowed father for the convent. When Thérèse was finally canonized and her family’s dreams realized, Céline, Thérèse’s sister, recalled “the humiliations that had been our lot and that of our dear father: relatives distancing themselves from us, apologizing for being part of our family; friends and acquaintances who said among themselves: ‘What good was his piety?’”

It is easy to forget, too, that hostility to celibacy can also afflict the saint in an interior way. St. Francis was not only stoned in the street, but taunted by internal accusers. We think of him as having made one definitive act of renunciation when he stripped himself in the town square, but a close reading of his life suggests a long struggle, painfully waged. As he said sardonically toward the end of his life, “Don’t canonize me too quickly. I am perfectly capable of fathering a child.”

But once the struggle was over, and the miracles and answered prayers began to appear, the celibate in former times was reclaimed by the human family, because he had proven himself fertile after all. Resistance gave way to acceptance, and acceptance to passionate acclaim. Then everyone wanted a piece of the saint; everyone wanted access to his body and his prayers. Then the one once coldly spurned for choosing heavenly over earthly goods was joyfully embraced for bringing heavenly goods to earth.

In Shadows on the Rock, Cather traces this trajectory in the life of the recluse in Montreal. On the far side of her parents’ anguish, her fiancé’s grief, and her own suffering, the recluse emerges as a binding force in Catholic Canada, a treasure held in common. After angels repair her spinning wheel in her upper room in Montreal, the story travels across country:

By many a fireside the story of Jeanne Le Ber’s spinning-wheel was told and re-told with loving exaggeration during that severe winter. The word of her visit from the angels went abroad over snow-burdened Canada to the remote parishes. Wherever it went, it brought pleasure, as if the recluse herself had sent to all those families whom she did not know some living beauty.

If the vocation of the recluse is extraordinary, the vocation of the priest is ordinary. But one meaning of ordinary is quotidian, and whereas miracles of the recluse’s sort are rare, the priest works his miracles daily. Every day, in the confessional, he forgives sin. Every day, on the altar, he brings God to earth as food. In the character of Bishop Laval—in his height and his great age, his legendary charity and formidable endurance—Cather gives the reader an icon of the dogged, indispensable vocation of the priest. If the recluse in her atelier is literally raised above the common lot, the old bishop in his daily work is literally on the ground with his flock. But his vocation, too, is vertical in its orientation. His vocation, too, reaches to heaven. The recurring image in the novel of the old man at work is the image of him ringing the church bell before dawn, calling the working people to Mass:

Many good people who did not want to go to mass at all, when they heard that hoarse, frosty bell clanging out under the black sky . . . groaned and went to the church. Because they thought of the old Bishop at the end of the bell-rope, and because his will was stronger than theirs.

Both the recluse and the priest, by their sacrifices and prayers, knit together the human family. But it is on the renunciations of the priest, especially, that the spiritual life of the laity depends. In the Catholic view, the life of Christ has passed into his sacraments, and only the priest can effect the sacraments that fully bring Christ’s life to Christ’s body. The spiritual health of Catholic people depends in a fundamental way on certain individuals choosing the vertical orientation of celibate priesthood over the horizontal ­orientation of marriage. Married life in the Church is never equal to priesthood and religious life but always dependent on them, as the horizontal of the cross hangs on the vertical. Earthly marriage is never an absolute but always an intermediate vocation, ordered to the ­Wedding Feast of the Lamb as a means to an end. The recluse in her upper room, the old bishop hanging on the bell-rope that disappears over his head—these are examples of individuals who have vowed themselves to God above all, and who then hand down to those below what they receive from above.

We have been speaking of the traditional ordering of the Church’s life, her traditional understanding of the relationship between her lay and religious vocations. Today, has this understanding changed? From the outside, the Church seems as committed to celibacy as ever. Before a non-Catholic knows anything of the Church’s life, before he attends a Mass or sees the inside of a confessional, he is aware of this man or woman, this priest or that nun, whom he perhaps passes in the street, and who then becomes the face of the Church for him.

If he is like most outsiders, he will be wary of this face, or sign, that he connects, correctly, with celibacy. He may be uncomfortable or repelled by the sign, or he may be attracted to it or impressed by it, but in any case, for him the priest or nun will be decisively Catholic. Inside the Church, asked what is most important to Catholicism, the practicing Catholic will probably answer, the Eucharist. But the outsider, without having read a word of theology, is most keenly aware of the priest, who in fact makes the Eucharist possible.

Or our outsider may encounter the Church in so-called Catholic literature, where again the Church’s traditional views will be communicated to him. ­Either he will read about priests or nuns (The Diary of a Country Priest, In This House of Brede, Morte d’Urban, Mariette in Ecstasy), or he will read about a love between a man and a woman that gives way before a greater love (The End of the Affair, Brideshead Revisited, Kristin Lavransdatter). These latter ­novels—so different from the novels of Jane ­Austen!—might well have affixed to their frontispieces as a warning Paul Claudel’s axiom, “God promises by his creatures but only fulfills by himself,” or François Mauriac’s baleful observation, “Today, after so many centuries, [Christ] is still there . . . just as we know him in the Gospels, with his ­inordinate demands, ­separating man from woman and woman from man, destroying the human couple to the scandal of many.”

Protestant novels, primarily concerned as they are with familial and social arrangements and the individual’s place in them, ordinarily end with marriage. But the Catholic novel, whose proper subject matter is the relationship of the individual to God, can only be finally consummated outside the bounds of the novel and even of life itself, which explains both why so few Catholic novels are entirely successful, and why so many end with death. The emphasis in Catholic literature is never on social consolidation and earthly marriage. Rather, the true Catholic note is a note of rupture and transcendence, rupture and implied restoration on a higher level, goods for which religious life—real people making real sacrifices with an eye to eternity—stands surety.

Even in non-Catholic, equivocally Catholic, or anti-­Catholic literature or films, if the Catholic Church comes into the story, priests and religious represent her, reinforcing for our outsider the Church’s traditional ordering of her internal life. Always it is the exceptional calling of the priest or the nun, or the even more exceptional calling of the priest who is also an exorcist, that stands for the Church, in a kind of metonymy. The author’s attitude to Catholicism may be melodramatic and hostile (Henry James’s The American), sardonic and world-weary (Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory), or conspiracy-minded and debunking of Catholic claims (anything by Dan Brown), but in every case the author’s fascination with Catholic priesthood and religious life is self-evident.

The media, too, turns out to be obsessed with priests and nuns, whether railing against them (Pope Benedict, abusive priests) or fawning over them (Pope Francis, liberal American nuns, Mother Teresa). Even the sexual abuse scandals in the Church, and the media’s preoccupation with them, evince the Church’s traditional claims, testifying as they do to the tremendous importance of the Catholic priesthood, for good or ill.

From all of this evidence, either consciously or unconsciously our outsider will conclude that celibate vocations are the key to the Catholic Church. It follows that if he decides to become a Catholic ­himself, it will be religious life that has attracted him; otherwise he would be content to become, or remain, a Protestant. Put another way, he desires something more than baptism and marriage, the only ­sacraments Christendom agrees can be effected without a priest. He may have ideas of becoming a priest or a religious himself. Or he may feel a need for the strengthening that confirmation promises or for the mysterious food of the Eucharist. Perhaps something weighs on his conscience that he has been unable privately to shake off; or he has had experience of evil, experience that has shaken and defiled him, and harbors a hope that a priest may be able to help him.

On the other hand, it may not be a specific sacrament but a whole way of life that attracts him, an attitude to life very different from what he has encountered elsewhere. On the deepest level, a person comes to the Catholic Church because he is disappointed with everything else. Work, family life, other religious communions have not sufficed. Our convert may have been abused in his natural family or betrayed in a marriage, but even if his relationships have been harmonious and his work in the world successful, he begins to feel that the horizon of his life is simply too low. Dimly, he begins to understand that natural affections not ordered to eternal realities are doomed. And so he finds himself attracted to the idealism and higher horizon of Catholic religious life. He hears the silence and the gales of laughter coming from behind convent walls, or he witnesses the serene, life-giving fatherhood of a holy priest, and he wants to be part of a church that has such vocations in its midst. If he is married, he begins to suspect that his marriage cannot stand on its own but needs the bracing vertical of celibate priesthood and religious life to keep it true. If he is single, for whatever reason, he hopes to discover his life’s true meaning in the Church, the Church that has never held up marriage between a man and a woman as the highest good.

In brief, whatever his situation, he wants his life ordered to what is greater. He wants a larger context for his private projects and relationships. And he wants peace, the peace that the world cannot give, and expects to find it in the Church that has always prioritized the contemplative over the active life.

So our outsider becomes a Catholic. And in the Church of the late twentieth and early twenty-­first century, what does he find? Certainly, the priest is still there, celebrating Mass, baptizing babies, presiding at marriages. If our convert needs to be baptized, a priest will baptize him. If he was previously baptized as a Protestant, a priest will hear his confession, a priest or bishop will confirm him, and he will receive the Eucharist consecrated by the same priest or bishop. And in the reception of the sacraments—in the sacrament of baptism most dramatically, but in the other sacraments as well—the convert will receive, together with an entirely new or reinvigorated life, an indelible impression of the generative power of the Catholic priest. From this point on, he will be able to attest to it from his own experience: The priest, at his ­ordination, receives potency of a supernatural kind, capable of generating and sustaining new men and women, who live by the power of Christ, who has redeemed them.

Still, however momentous the changes wrought by the sacraments of initiation, and however powerful the convert’s impression of the part played by the priest, soon enough, as he perseveres in his new life, he begins to understand that, in the Church at large, the center of gravity—or at least the perceived center of gravity—has shifted away from the minis­terial priesthood. What he previously may have understood in the abstract—that thousands of priests were ­laicized in the aftermath of Vatican II, seminaries emptied, and monasteries collapsed—he now begins to understand in the concrete, in the plain fact that in many parts of the country there simply aren’t enough priests. And even where there are enough priests, he notices that their sacramental importance has been de-emphasized, and distance introduced between them and their parishioners.

For example, after he consecrates the Eucharist, the priest in many parishes sits to one side while lay people distribute the sacrament to other lay people who, in turn, communicate themselves.

As for the sacrament of confession, in many parts of the country it has all but died out. One hour a week in most parishes is all the time allotted to confession, and even then, there is often nobody there. The consensus seems to be that the general confession in the Mass is sufficient; personal confession to a priest is no longer necessary.

Then, too, because the laity can distribute the Eucharist, they often carry it to the sick, where again, a traditional opportunity for confession—not to mention reception of the sacrament of the anointing of the sick—is lost. And as cremation becomes commonplace and even many Catholics scatter cremains, a growing number of Catholics now dispense with a Funeral Mass altogether, denying the priest even that last, traditional opportunity to exercise his ministry.

As for exorcism—a particular competency of a specially trained priest—many archdioceses no longer have an exorcist on staff. All of which leads one to wonder whether the priesthood is presently de-emphasized because there aren’t enough priests, or if there aren’t enough priests in part because their ministry is increasingly de-emphasized. It should be admitted, too, that there are priests who cooperate in their own marginalization: by refusing to visit the dying at night, for example, or to hear a confession outside the scheduled hour.

Meanwhile the laity, the state to which so many priests and religious reverted in the wake of the council, is everywhere in the ascendant. If the priest’s job description has shrunk, opportunities for the laity have expanded. The year 1987 was explicitly dedicated to the laity, but all the years since Vatican II could properly be called the Era of the Laity, when it has been widely announced that the laity have come into their own. They are the true Church of God, this line of reasoning goes; the ordained ministers are simply the supporting cast. It is the active apostolates that matter; contemplative life is disappearing because it has been outgrown.

Accordingly, the emphasis is no longer on the priesthood per se but on “the priesthood of all believers”; no longer on literal poverty but on “detachment”; no longer on virginity but on “chastity according to one’s station in life.” Marriage especially has been elevated in the Church’s preaching to a point where even well-formed Catholics now believe that it is equivalent to priesthood and religious life. Scriptures that challenge this view are either shrugged off (“Jesus didn’t mean that”) or reinterpreted and then applied in a spiritual or metaphorical sense to the laity.

At the same time, there has been a strong push to identify and canonize more lay and married saints, as if the small number of married saints relative to the number of canonized celibates were a function of prejudice rather than the fruit of an underlying truth. Among young intellectual Catholics, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body continues to be in vogue, at least those parts of it that line up with contemporary pieties. And as marriage and family life have been increasingly romanticized, the question is increasingly asked whether priests shouldn’t be allowed to marry, too, and the physical privileges of marriage universally enjoyed. Everywhere the emphasis in the Church is increasingly on natural rather than supernatural relationships, in a shift that amounts to a kind of supersessionism in reverse, as the natural or blood family, as in Judaism, comes to the fore.

It was in this Church, influenced both by Protestantism and the secular culture and ideologically primed for a final shrugging off of the priest, that the news of the clerical sexual abuse scandals surfaced. It was at this point, at the very end of the century Pope Leo XIII foresaw would be dire for the Church, that we learned that, devastating as was the vast exodus of priests and nuns after the council, the real problem wasn’t those who left but a small percentage of those who stayed, like Judas who stayed with Jesus even when many of Jesus’s other disciples fell away (John 6:60–71) in order to deliver the death blow from within.

In the chaos that followed, as waves of disbelief, fury, and grief swept through the Church, the surrounding culture, smelling blood, moved in for the kill. Now it could be openly expressed: hatred for the Catholic Church and her celibate hierarchy. Now the traditional script in which the celibate is belatedly vindicated by the holy fruits of his life could be torn up and replaced by a script that says that celibacy ends in depravity and asceticism doesn’t have to be affirmed at all.

In this script, celibacy isn’t an ideal but an abomination. It isn’t a harmless anachronism but an occasion and even a cause of sin. No one can be celibate, not even Jesus himself. The sexual fantasies that tempted Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ, Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The DaVinci Code treats as historical facts, suspensefully unearthed; and by 2013, in Mark Adamo’s opera The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, sex between Jesus and Mary Magdalene is simply a ho-hum given, with the Magdalene now Jesus’s teacher rather than the other way around (“Rabboni!”), as she initiates him into the mysteries of carnal love.

As for Jesus’s mother, the original celibate and contemplative in the Christian tradition—the one who, standing in the breach, delivered to the world the Christ she conceived from above—she, too, must be pulled down. If celibacy is the problem, Mary especially must be defamed and the Annunciation repudiated, because it was at the Annunciation, the hinge on which history turns, that a new principle of generation entered the world. In the past, when the Church was in disgrace, Mary was given a pass, but no longer. Now the blasphemies enumerated in the First Saturday Devotions from Fatima—Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception, ­Blasphemies against [Mary’s] virginity, and so on—take on flesh.

If the blasphemers hesitate to attack Mary directly, indirect methods serve. If she isn’t credible as a villain, perhaps she may be credible as a victim. The Irish writer Colm Tóibín’s strategy, in his 2013 play and novel The Testament of Mary, is to have Mary desacralize herself. In her own words, in her “testimony,” she dismantles both her own reputation and Christianity’s. As she tells it, there was no Virgin Birth or Incarnation. There was no Resurrection. The disciples made it all up, for gain. They pressured and manipulated her, harassed and tormented her. Her contempt for these imaginary disciples is Tóibín’s own contempt for contemporary Irish priests, just as Thomas Cromwell’s attitude to English monks and nuns in Hilary ­Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012) is Mantel’s own attitude to Catholic celibacy, expressed through the character of Cromwell.

In these widespread contemporary attacks on the Church, vituperative outrage and blanket condemnations are the rule. In Peter Matthiessen’s 2014 novel In Paradise, it is taken for granted that Pius XII and the Vatican were responsible for the Holocaust. In the 2013 film Philomena, a lay person—Philomena herself, an unwed mother of a gay son—can be holy, but no priest or nun. Celibates by definition are monsters of hypocrisy and enemies of natural life.

Hilary Mantel, being a greater artist, plays a deeper game. In her acclaimed novels about ­Henry VIII’s England, Thomas More is her villain, as much for his hair shirt as his orthodoxy, and Thomas Cromwell her hero, the man who pulled down ­England’s monasteries. But outrage and self-righteous indignation are not Cromwell’s style. As Mantel conceives him, Cromwell is the future: the reasonable, practical, thoroughly secular man, the man in whom the religious impulse is finally dead. The passions of religion—the zeal of the reformers, the anguished scruples of More, even the ­attenuated orthodoxy of the king—leave him cold. Even contempt is too strong a word for his attitude to religion and those still deceived by it. As the revelations of clerical sin in our own day finally cease to shock, and anger and disbelief give way to disgust and contempt, ­Mantel, as Thomas Cromwell, proposes indifference as the last word, the final nail in the coffin of Catholic Christianity.

And the Church’s response to all of this? Because of the guilt of the few, she has been largely silent before her accusers. As the scandals have unfolded, she has scarcely attempted to defend celibacy. Instead, she has circled the wagons around marriage. Sometimes it seems as if all the idealism formerly attached to priesthood and religious life has now been transferred to marriage and the natural family. In my parish, the pews that emptied after the scandals have gradually filled up with large, homeschooling families. New rituals have appeared: a children’s offering at the offertory, a final blessing for children too young to receive Holy Communion. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day have become red-letter days in the Church, and not only weddings but even some proposals of marriage are undertaken with a pious solemnity formerly reserved for religious professions. And whereas St. Ignatius deemed marriage scarcely deserving of a vow, now, on a regular basis, married couples are invited to stand and renew their marriage vows en masse, in a ritual uncomfortably reminiscent of the mass weddings of Sun Myung Moon.

And still there is virtually no preaching on priesthood or religious life. There is talk of natural family planning more than of Jesus’s supernatural family, “born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). In the past, on Holy Thursday, the pastor washed the feet of other priests and lay brothers, witnessing to the truth that Jesus washed the feet of men who had left everything to follow him. Now, on Holy Thursday, he washes the feet of married men.

In the short run, it does no harm and possibly much good to try to strengthen monogamous, lifelong marriage. But to think that this is the answer to the Church’s problems is to think as man thinks rather than as God thinks. In the long run, if the vertical to which the horizontal relationship of marriage is ordered comes down, not only marriage but the Gospel itself will fall. When the Church stresses relationships between creatures more than the relationship of the individual to God—when she treats marriage as an end rather than as a seedbed for vocations—the Gospel message itself is compromised. The hard Paschal truths at the core of Christianity are suppressed: the truth that the natural family is never fully commensurate with Christ’s new family; the truth that a man’s enemies will be members of his own household (Matt. 10:36) and that in order to be Christ’s disciple he must hate not only father and mother, wife and children, but even his own life (Luke 14:26). And in the atmosphere of tribalism, human respect, and sentimentality that ensues, an illusion of human sufficiency creeps in, an illusion that, in our human strength, we can meet one another’s needs.

Recently I heard a sermon preached on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. In Matthew’s parable, ten virgins go with their lamps to meet a bridegroom. The five wise virgins have oil for their lamps; the five foolish have none. When the bridegroom is near, the foolish ask the wise for oil, but the wise refuse them. Looking for oil elsewhere, the foolish are shut out from the feast. When they return and knock, the bridegroom says, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:1–13).

The meaning of the parable is clear enough. It is about the vertical dimension of the Christian life: the primacy of the individual’s relationship to God and the limitations and final inadequacy of human relationships. The virgins who hold on to their oil are not condemned by Jesus; on the contrary, he calls them wise. The foolish show their foolishness both in their delinquency and in their attempt to get oil from the others. The “oil” that lights our human lamps—our fundamental fuel, if you will—comes from God. Like the oil of chrism in the sacrament of baptism, it signifies sanctifying grace, the gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift of grace we can receive only from God, either directly in prayer or sacramentally through his chosen ministers. We can neither give it to others, nor receive it from them. The high virtue of charity—“willing good to someone,” in ­Aquinas’s formulation—demands that we tell this truth. To ­attempt, instead, to do what the foolish demand of us—to try to be “nice,” in other words—or to make foolish demands ourselves, avails nothing. But the preacher, influenced, I dare say, by current trends in the Church, offered his own interpretation. “Here’s what I think,” he said. “They should have shared.”

For Catholics like myself, who at some point in our lives decamped to the Catholic Church from the lower horizon of Protestantism, these are discouraging times. It is disheartening, to say the least, to see the Church so infiltrated by the surrounding culture and so demoralized by the recent scandals that she is in danger of rejecting in her own life what is most decisively Catholic and selling for a mess of pottage her deepest mysteries and highest privileges.

Ideally, in the Church’s life, there is a ­continual interplay between marriage and celibacy, sensuality and asceticism, like the interplay in the creation ­between heat and cold, day and night, light and darkness, and so on, all of which rhythmic ­oppositions, in their alternating times and seasons, bless the Lord (Dan. 3:57–88). Even within marriage itself there were seasons of feasting and fasting, indulgence and abstinence, just as in the Church’s traditional attitude to marriage there was idealism but also a healthy skepticism, romance but also a bracing note of sardonic realism (“better to marry than burn”), that paradoxically served marriage well. In fact, it was by downplaying earthly marriage and ordering it to what was greater and eternal that the Church ensured marriage’s health, tamping down ­unrealistic expectations and not placing on marriage a weight greater than it was intended to bear.

In our relational lives there is only one absolute good, and that is our relationship to God, a good denied to no one, lay or religious, who seeks it, prioritizes it, sacrifices for it, holds fast to it. Relative goods, on the other hand—including health and success, marriage and children—man cannot demand. God dispenses relative goods as he sees fit, in order to help man find his way to the final good of eternal life with him.

But in our culture, and increasingly in the Church itself, marriage is not regarded as a means but an end. It is not considered a relative but an absolute good, and therefore a right. The usual solution or sequel to widowhood or divorce in our day isn’t a late religious vocation or a salubrious solitude, but more marriage, or more venery in Roger Angell’s phrase in a recent essay in the New Yorker: “More venery. More love; more closeness; more sex and romance. Bring it back, no matter what, no matter how old we are.” In a climate like this—a climate for which the Church bears a certain responsibility, given her abuse of the grace of celibacy and her disproportionate enthusiasm for marriage—what does the Church say to homosexual persons who wish to marry? What does she say, for that matter, to the invalidly remarried who want to receive the Eucharist and are dumbfounded by the suggestion that they forgo sexual relations in order to do so? Should we be surprised that in a culture that so privileges marriage over celibacy, many Catholics now assume that the Eucharist is ordered to marriage rather than the other way around—that the choice for marriage is primary, in other words, and the ­Eucharist simply a secondary enhancement?

Once marriage is understood to be an absolute good and a right, it becomes very difficult to explain why, in certain circumstances, the goods of marriage have to be set aside. When the Church herself doesn’t value celibacy at its true value, it is all but impossible to recommend celibacy to others. The less robust and exemplary the celibate example in the Church, the more the idea spreads that the choice for God costs nothing. The less celibacy is apprehended and lived as a grace, the more it begins to be thought of as a punishment.

In the long run, undervaluing celibacy is a suicidal path for the Church. But already certain individuals suffer grave harm from the depreciation. For the individual, nothing is more important than the choice of vocation. Nothing is more important than that he find his true path in life, the path that God has marked out for him. When a vocation is correctly discerned, even its most formidable challenges can be met; when mistaken, even its ordinary burdens may prove hard to bear. Accordingly, one of the most important responsibilities of the Church is to help people discern their vocations. But in a time like the present, when at best an equivalency is assumed between marriage and celibacy, and at worst celibacy is implicitly or even explicitly devalued, what happens to the individual who is actually called to celibate priesthood or religious life? How is his capacity to respond to God’s call—especially the call to sacrifice sexual goods—affected by a widespread insinuation that such a sacrifice is unnecessary, that there is no special benefit to celibacy, and as far as sanctity goes, as good a result can be had from marriage?

At this point, we have entered what von Balthasar calls “the zone of the ambivalent,” in which people offer to God things good in themselves, but not the things God has actually asked of them. Such evasions are perennial temptations for the Christian. Indeed, one could paint the whole history of Christianity as “the history of all the things [Christians] offer to God as substitutes in order to escape the act of real faith.” So the question must be asked, whether the Church in our day is enabling and even encouraging such evasions by not telling the whole truth about vocations.

In the past, in Christian cultures, a paradigmatic movement can be traced, in the collective psyche if not across actual terrain, from the world to the monastery. In our time, the paradigmatic movement has been from the monastery to the world. Following the general migration in the Church, various novels and memoirs have followed individuals from religion to lay life: Kathryn Hulme’s 1956 novel The Nun’s Story, for example; or Karen Armstrong’s 1981 memoir Through the Narrow Gate; or Colum McCann’s 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin, in which a male character who has taken religious vows is eventually brought to bed by a woman. On the face of it, these narratives reject the austerities of religion. But on a deeper level they turn out to be spiritual tragedies, their predominant note not one of triumphalism, but of sadness. Even in a culture like our own, in which the propaganda runs all one way, the ideals of religious life, like the virgin martyrs themselves, turn out to be hard to kill.

In the Catholic Church the whole truth abides. All truth has been entrusted to the Church, according to Jesus’s promise (John 16:13). Whether or not a given truth finds expression in a particular time or place is not finally important. What is important is that neglected truths remain in the Church’s treasury, like recessive genes, waiting for favorable conditions or an auspicious hour in which to express themselves.

The wait may be long. Blessed John Henry ­Newman, in an 1850 sermon on the occasion of the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England, described a wait of three hundred years. But when the three hundred years were over, “the Church came forth not changed in aspect or voice, as calm and keen, as vigorous and as well furnished as when [the prison doors] closed on her.”

In the Church’s treasury, along with other neg­lected truths, the truth of the preeminence of her celibate vocations is still there. It is there in the relevant Church documents, for anyone and everyone to read. It is there in Catholic literature and in the example and writings of the saints. It is there in the story of Jane de Chantal, who famously stepped over her own son on her way to founding the Visitation Order, or the example of Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, who, like many others in the Church’s history, took a vow of celibacy during their marriage. It is there in the sensus fidei, or “supernatural sense of faith” of the whole people of God, who in our day beatified by acclamation (“Santo subito!”) not lay or married people as the Congregation for the Causes of Saints might have preferred, but John Paul II and Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a celibate priest and a celibate nun.

Finally and most consistently, the truth about the evangelical counsels is there in certain passages of Scripture, proclaimed in their turn at Mass, as the cycles of readings require. Year after year, whether convenient or inconvenient, whether faithfully ­expounded or passed over in embarrassment, the relevant Scriptures are read—“Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” (Matt. 8:22); “It is well . . . to remain single” (1 Cor. 7:8); “You lack one thing; go, sell what you have and give to the poor” (Mark 10:21)—and men and women respond, in diminishing numbers for many years, but now again in greater strength.

Relative to the laity, priests and religious will always be few, even where vocations increase. It is inevitable that they be few, because the demands placed on the celibate are beyond the reach of most men. Yet it is on the example of the few that the rest of the Church depends: for the sacraments, in the case of the priest, but also for a visible witness to the contemplative foundation of every Christian existence. We live in a world where Freudian ideas still hold sway, including the idea that religion is a sublimation of sex. The celibate, by his example, proposes a truth exactly opposite: that every other love, every lesser love, is a sublimated form of the love of God.

In the greatest saints, these sublimated forms fade away into the mysterious, unmediated brightness of God himself. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina was not a philosopher like John Paul II or a lawyer like Thomas More; he was not a teacher like Elizabeth Ann Seton or a subtle theologian like Thérèse of Lisieux. He was a religious and a priest, an alter Christus even to the wounds in his hands, feet, and side. Coarse and unsophisticated as he was, in his person the vertical of the cross—the love of God above all created things—was manifest. Writing to a friend after a visit to San Giovanni Rotondo monastery, Don Giuseppe De Luca, an Italian historian of Christian spirituality, shared his impressions of the wounded friar:

Padre Pio, dear Papini, is a sickly, ignorant Capuchin, very much the crude southerner. And yet (bear in mind that besides making confession to him, I also dined with him and we spent a great deal of time together), and yet—God is with him, that fearful God that we glimpse in revery and which he has in his soul, unbearably hot, and in his flesh, which trembles constantly . . . as if battered by ever more powerful gales. I truly saw the holy there, holiness not of action but of passion, the holiness that God expresses. Although he is a man of very meager intelligence, he offered me two or three words that I have never found on the lips of other men, and not even (and this is harder to admit) in the books of the Church. . . . There is nothing of ordinary spirituality about him, nor is there anything extraordinarily miraculous, stunning, or showy; there is merely intelligentia spiritualis, a free gift from God. And there is a passion, even a human passion, for God, dear Papini, that is so beautiful, so ravishingly sweet that I can’t tell you. The love of woman and the love of ideas are nothing by comparison, they are things that do not go beyond a certain point, whether near or far. While the love of God, how, I do not know, burns, and the more it burns the more it finds to burn. I have the absolutely certain sensation that God and man have met in this person.

Article written by Patricia Snow

[phillipcole]

Post-AGT Appearance 809: Scott Shannon in the Morning May 22

My songs would drop to 27, 30 and 35.  There would be plenty to talk about but Shannon would wish only to rush me into the Time Magazine routine again.

Shannon: That of course was the John Williams Medley, written by Phil Cole to several old John Williams themes.  Phil joins us now as he does each and every Monday morning to talk about things.  How are you today Phil?

PBC: Very well, thank you.

Shannon: All revved up for your new song debut this coming weekend?

PBC: Trying to take it in stride, but...

Shannon: Butterflies in your stomach?

PBC: More like Mothra and Githra.

Shannon: Ha ha ha.

PBC: This is great.

Shannon: And how are your songs doing this week?

PBC: That one is 27, My Homeland is down to 30 and soon might meet the other Celine duet, currently 35.

Shannon: Well, last week, you started that routine about the Time Magazine 100 most influential, and...we’ve been swamped with requests.

PBC: Good.

Shannon: Can you resume it today?

PBC: Sure can.

Shannon: And last week you said you had infinite jokes about it?

PBC: Well, spinoffs, like past lists, because as hard to recognize as some of these people are, looking at their list from say 10 years ago and following through...

Shannon: Lot of flops?

PBC: Huge flops!  not only that I do lists from like 200 years ago, trying to guess when they might have first spotted Beethoven, or made a big deal about Jenny Lind, that sort of thing.

Shannon: Unlimited potential.

PBC: Indeed.

Shannon: Well, you left off at Emma Stone.

PBC: Yes, that brings us to Barry Jenkins of Moonlight and how he colluded with the Russians to win the Oscar!

Shannon: Oh my!

PBC: You know they expanded to 8 nominees for best picture to divide the vote for really good movies, then phased out some old voters, and, don’t get this wrong but...Jim Crow in reverse.  That would be Mij Worc, or I guess Worc Mij.

Shannon: Ha ha ha ha ha.

PBC: So he won and now we can look forward to sad tearjerkers no one saw winning every year now.

Next we have Ryan Reynolds, because a few handsome white guys need to make the list.

That’s followed by Leslie Jones.  I guess the Loretta Lyn...ch skit I wrote put her over the top.  She could send a thank you note!

Kerry James Marshall, a painter, and he didn’t even have to die forst!

Donald Glover, staff writer for 30 Rock.  I guess I’m not allowed to talk about him.

Shannon: Oh boy!

PBC: Alicia Keys, great name for a pianist right!

Alessandro Michele, trying to look like John Lennon.  My wife’s a fashion designer and she doesn’t even know who he is.

Shannon: Head designer for Gucci I believe.

PBC: I guess!  I guess he doesn’t work for Guess!  Oh well, my wife never pays attentio to her rivals.  When I was first viewing her work I told her she designed like Vivienne Westwood.  She said “Who’s she?”

Ava DuVernay!  Venus Williams wrote the little story and made us wait til the last line to explain what she does for a living! 

James Corden tells jokes, right?  And he’s English and wants the US to let Iran have the atom bomb.  He shouldn’t make longterm plans.

Margot Robbie makes the list somehow.  She must have slept with the judges.  Of course Scorsese supports her, so he might have made time an offer they can’t refuse.

Shannon: Saved that one from the dust heap, maybe.

PBC: Dangerous business humor, that’s for sure.  Sarah Paulson, almost as funny as her uncle Pat.

Melinda Gates makes the list.  Of course if this was a real list Bill Gates would have been on it for at least 35 straight years.  She has influence all right, but how many people get to marry a genius?  I’m already married!

Juan Manuel Santos of Columbia.  It’s hard to get the vote of so many drug lords!

Pope Francis made it!  They want him to make a shrine out of their building.  It’s more like a mausoleum.

This says India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was once banned from the US for anti-Muslim violence.  Now he’ll be our hero.

Sandra Day O’Connor made it again.  She retired 11 years ago, so that’s their way of telling the rest of the Supreme Court to quit so they might make the list someday.

Shannon: Excuse me, I’m not sure...

PBC: The best-laid plans of liberals often blow up in their face.

Brad: And Bill Clinton’s best laid gals...

PBC: Don’t try it Brad!

Brad: Didn’t make the list this year neither.

Shannon: That could have been worse.

PBC: Anyway Sonia Sotomayor wrote about her.  Apparently she uses video games to teach kids how Democracy works.  Does that include the President Shooting Gallery Game?  That Weiner game video isn’t about hot dogs kids! 

Shannon: Oh my!  You’re on dangerous ground now.

PBC: Do you want us to continue right now?

Shannon: Why?  Who’s next?

PBC: The Turkish tyrant Erdogan.

Shannon: Better save him for a future broadcast.  It’ll be Tuesday next week, after the holiday, right?

PBC: Yes, I’ll be in Virginia somewhere that morning.

Shannon: We’ll talk to you then.

PBC: Thanks.

Shannon: That was Phil Cole.  Stay tuned for more great hits.

[collectorscorner]

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Main St. Bel Air, MD 21014 www.collectorscornermd.com NEW ARRIVALS : Wednesday 1/1/2020 ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS Archie Milestones Digest #6, $7.99 Archie The Married Life 10 Years Later #5 (Cover A Dan Parent), $3.99 Archie The Married Life 10 Years Later #5 (Cover B David Mack), $3.99 World Of Archie Jumbo Comics Digest #95, $7.99 BOOM ENTERTAINMENT Drew And Jot Volume 1 Dueling Doodles HC, $14.99 COMIC SHOP NEWS Comic Shop News #1698, AR DARK HORSE COMICS Black Hammer Volume 4 Age Of Doom Part 2 TP, $19.99 Crone #3 (Of 5), $3.99 Everything #5, $3.99 Grendel Devil's Odyssey #3 (Of 8)(Cover A Matt Wagner), $3.99 Grendel Devil's Odyssey #3 (Of 8)(Cover B Dan Schkade), $3.99 Miniature Final Fantasy No Adventure Too Large HC, $19.99 Ruby Falls #4 (Of 4), $3.99 Sword Daughter #9 (Cover A Ben Oliver), $4.99 Sword Daughter #9 (Cover B Mack Chater), $4.99 Tomb Raider Omnibus Volume 2 TP, $29.99 DC COMICS Absolute Death HC (New Edition), $99.99 Action Comics #1018 (Cover A John Romita Jr. & Klaus Janson), $3.99 Action Comics #1018 (Cover B Gabriele Dell'Otto Card Stock Variant), $4.99 Batgirl #42 (Cover A Carmine Di Giandomenico), $3.99 Batgirl #42 (Cover B Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson), $3.99 Batman Beyond #39 (Cover A Dustin Nguyen), $3.99 Batman Beyond #39 (Cover B Francis Manapul), $3.99 Batman Gotham Knights Transference TP, $29.99 Birds Of Prey The Huntress TP, $19.99 Books Of Magic #15, $3.99 DC Previews #21 (January 2020), AR Detective Comics #1018 (Cover A Rafael Sandoval & Jordi Tarragona), $3.99 Detective Comics #1018 (Cover B Igor Kordey), $3.99 Dial H For Hero #10 (Of 12), $3.99 Diana Princess Of The Amazons GN, $9.99 Dollar Comics Batman #613, $1.00 Dreaming #17, $3.99 Flash #85 (Cover A Rafa Sandoval & Jordi Tarragona), $3.99 Flash #85 (Cover B Kaare Andrews Card Stock Variant), $4.99 Harley Quinn #69 (Cover A Guillem March), $3.99 Harley Quinn #69 (Cover B Frank Cho), $3.99 Injustice Vs The Masters Of The Universe TP, $16.99 Joker Harley Criminal Sanity #2 (Of 9)(Cover A Francesco Mattina), $5.99 Joker Harley Criminal Sanity #2 (Of 9)(Cover B Mike Mayhew), $5.99 Justice League Dark #18 (Cover A Yanick Paquette), $3.99 Justice League Dark #18 (Cover B Clayton Crain), $3.99 Lois Lane #7 (Of 12)(Cover A Mike Perkins), $3.99 Lois Lane #7 (Of 12)(Cover B Yasmin Putri), $3.99 Martian Manhunter #11 (Of 12)(Cover A Riley Rossmo), $3.99 Martian Manhunter #11 (Of 12)(Cover B Joshua Middleton), $3.99 Red Hood Outlaw #41 (Cover A Dan Mora), $3.99 Red Hood Outlaw #41 (Cover B Philip Tan), $3.99 Superman Giant #1, $4.99 Terrifics #23 (Cover A Dan Mora), $3.99 Terrifics #23 (Cover B Gabriel Hardman), $3.99 Wonder Woman Warbringer GN, $16.99 DIAMOND PUBLICATIONS Previews #376 (January 2020), $3.99 DK PUBLISHING I Am C-3PO The Inside Story (Slipcased Edition), $150.00 Star Wars The Rise Of Skywalker The Galactic Guide HC, $12.99 Star Wars The Rise Of Skywalker The Visual Dictionary HC, $24.99 DYNAMITE ENTERTAINMENT Boys Omnibus Volume 1 TP (Cover B Photo)(Garth Ennis Signed Edition), $29.99 Boys Omnibus Volume 2 TP (Cover B Photo)(Garth Ennis Signed Edition), $29.99 Elvira The Shape Of Elvira #1 (Cover E Photo)(CGC Graded Edition), AR James Bond Live And Let Die HC, $24.99 Red Sonja And Vampirella Meet Betty And Veronica #2 (Of 12)(Cover L Fay Dalton Virgin Variant), AR IDW PUBLISHING DuckTales Faires And Scares #1 (Of 3)(Cover A Marco Ghiglione & Christina Stella), $3.99 DuckTales Faires And Scares #1 (Of 3)(Cover B Marco Ghiglione & Christina Stella), $3.99 DuckTales Faires And Scares #1 (Of 3)(Cover C DuckTales Creative Team), AR G.I. Joe #4 (Cover A Niko Walter), $3.99 G.I. Joe #4 (Cover B Naomi Franquiz), AR I Can Sell You A Body #1 (Of 4)(Cover A George Kambadais), $3.99 Library Of American Comics Essentials Volume 14 Barney Google 1928 HC, $29.99 Marvel Vault Of Heroes Hulk Biggest And Best TP, $17.99 Mighty Elvis A Graphic Biography HC, $19.99 Pandemica #3 (Of 5)(Cover A Alex Sanchez), $3.99 Pandemica #3 (Of 5)(Cover B Alex Sanchez Black & White Variant), AR Starcadia Quest #3 (Of 3)(Cover A Aurelio Mazzara), $4.99 Starcadia Quest #3 (Of 3)(Cover B Nicoletta Baldari), AR Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Urban Legends #20 (Cover A Frank Fosco), $3.99 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Urban Legends #20 (Cover B Frank Fosco & Erik Larsen), $3.99 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Urban Legends #20 (Cover C Kevin Eastman), AR Transformers #15 (Cover A Josh Perez), $3.99 Transformers #15 (Cover B Josh Burcham), $3.99 Transformers #15 (Cover C Luca Pizzari), AR Transformers The IDW Collection Phase Two Volume 10 HC, $49.99 IMAGE COMICS Copra #4, $3.99 Curse Words Volume 5 Fairy-Tale Ending TP (not verified by Diamond), $16.99 Death Or Glory #8 (Cover A Bengal), $3.99 Death Or Glory #8 (Cover B Mahmud Asrar), $3.99 Killadelphia #2 (Cover A Jason Shawn Alexander), $3.99 Killadelphia #2 (Cover B Jim Mahfood), $3.99 Manifest Destiny #40, $3.99 Nomen Omen #4 (Of 15)(Cover A Jacopo Camagni) , $3.99 Nomen Omen #4 (Of 15)(Cover B Matteo Lolli), $3.99 Nomen Omen #4 (Of 15)(Cover C Brandon Graham), $3.99 Olympia #2 (Of 5), $3.99 INSIGHT EDITIONS Star Wars Rebel Starfighter Owners' Workshop Manual HC, $24.99 IT'S ALIVE Pink Lemonade Holiday Grab-Bag #1 (One Shot)(Cover A Nick Cagnetti), $5.99 Pink Lemonade Holiday Grab-Bag #1 (One Shot)(Cover B Don Simpson), AR KODANSHA COMICS 10 Dance Volume 5 GN, $12.99 Happiness Volume 10 GN, $12.99 Waiting For Spring Volume 12 GN, $10.99 LION FORGE Ballad Of Yaya Volume 4 The Island GN, $9.99 MANUSCRIPT PRESS Comics Revue Presents December 2019, $19.95 MARRS MEDIA Rue Morgue Magazine #192, $9.95 MARVEL COMICS Black Bolt HC, $34.99 Black Cat Grand Theft Marvel Volume 1 TP, $15.99 Black Panther And The Agents Of Wakanda #5 (Cover A David Nakayama), $3.99 Black Panther And The Agents Of Wakanda #5 (Cover B Mico Suayan Marvels X Variant), AR Black Panther And The Agents Of Wakanda #5 (Cover C Adam Warren), AR Conan Chronicles Epic Collection Volume 4 The Battle Of Shamla Pass TP, $44.99 Conan The Hour Of The Dragon TP, $34.99 Daredevil #16 (Cover A Julian Totino Tedesco), $3.99 Daredevil #16 (Cover B Ryan Benjamin Marvels X Variant), AR Doctor Doom #4 (Cover A Tomm Coker), $3.99 Doctor Doom #4 (Cover B Will Sliney Marvels X Variant), AR Hawkeye Freefall #1 (Cover A Kim Jacinto), $3.99 Hawkeye Freefall #1 (Cover B David Cockrum Hidden Gem Variant), AR Hawkeye Freefall #1 (Cover C Otto Schmidt), AR Hawkeye Freefall #1 (Cover D Elizabeth Torque), AR Legends Of Marvel Spider-Man TP, $15.99 Marauders #5 (Cover A Russell Dauterman), $3.99 Marauders #5 (Cover B Tony S. Daniel Dark Phoenix 40th Variant), AR Marvel Previews Volume 4 #30 (January 2020), $1.25 Miles Morales Spider-Man #14 (Cover A Javi Garron), $3.99 Miles Morales Spider-Man #14 (Cover B Declan Shalvey Marvels X Variant), AR Miles Morales Volume 2 Bring On Bad Guys TP, $15.99 Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur Full Moon TP, $12.99 New Mutants Epic Collection Volume 2 The Demon Bear Saga TP (New Printing), $39.99 Punisher Soviet #3 (Of 6)(Cover A Paolo Rivera), $3.99 Punisher Soviet #3 (Of 6)(Cover B Mike Dowling), AR Spider-Man And Venom Double Trouble #3 (Of 4), $3.99 Star Wars #1 (Cover A R. B. Silva), $4.99 Star Wars #1 (Cover B Arthur Adams), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover C Mahmud A. Asrar), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover D Jen Bartel Leia Variant), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover E Blank Variant), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover F Adam Hughes Luke Variant), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover G Movie Variant), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover H Phil Noto Party Variant), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover H R. B. Silva Premiere Variant), AR Star Wars #1 (Cover J Chris Sprouse The Empire Strikes Back Variant), AR Sword Master #7, $3.99 Tarot #1 (Of 4)(Cover A Paul Renaud), $4.99 Tarot #1 (Of 4)(Cover B Alan Davis), AR Tarot #1 (Of 4)(Cover C David Nakayama), AR Thor #1 (Cover A Olivier Coipel), $4.99 Thor #1 (Cover B Stanley Artgerm Lau), AR Thor #1 (Cover C Stanley Artgerm Lau Virgin Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover D Blank Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover E Olivier Coipel Premiere Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover F Jack Kirby Hidden Gem Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover G Nic Klein Party Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover H Ryan Brown Marvels X Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover I Mr. Garcin Collage Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover J Kris Anka Rainbow Bridge Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover K Matteo Scalera), AR Thor #1 (Cover L Ryan Stegman), AR Thor #1 (Cover M Jen Bartel), AR Thor #1 (Cover N Nic Klein), AR Thor #1 (Cover O Ron Lim), AR Thor #1 (Cover P Arthur Adams), AR Thor #1 (Cover Q Woo Dae Shim), AR Thor #1 (Cover R Blue Variant), AR Thor #1 (Cover S John Buscema Wraparound Hidden Gem Variant), AR True Believers The Criminally Insane Bullseye #1, $1.00 True Believers The Criminally Insane Green Goblin #1, $1.00 Web Of Black Widow #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Jung-Geun Yoon), $3.99 Web Of Black Widow #5 (Of 5)(Cover B Simone Bianchi), AR Web Of Black Widow #5 (Of 5)(Cover C Sara Pichelli), AR X-Men #4 (Cover A Leinil Francis Yu), $3.99 X-Men #4 (Cover B Belen Ortega Venom Island Variant), AR PANINI PUBLISHING Doctor Who Magazine Companion The Twelfth Doctor Volume 2, $16.99 PAPERCUTZ Sisters Volume 5 M.Y.O.B. GN, $9.99 Sisters Volume 5 M.Y.O.B. HC, $14.99 PENGUIN GROUP UK Doctor Who Revelation Of The Daleks HC (not verified by Diamond), $16.99 PENGUIN YOUNG READERS Meet Sonic SC, $5.99 PS ARTBOOKS Pre-Code Classics Mysteries Weird And Strange Volume 2 HC, $51.99 Pre-Code Classics Mysteries Weird And Strange Volume 2 HC (Slipcase Edition), $56.99 Silver Age Classics Outer Space Volume 2 HC (Slipcase Edition), $55.99 REBELLION/2000 AD 2000 AD Pack November 2019, $24.00 2000 AD Prog #2160, $6.00 Absalom Terminal Diagnosis TP, $16.99 Dr. Mesmer's Revenge TP, $18.99 Misty Presents The Jordi Badia Romero Collection HC, $24.99 SCOUT COMICS Planet Caravan TP, $16.99 Stabbity Bunny Emmet's Story #1 (Cover A Dwayne Biddix), $3.99 Stabbity Bunny Emmet's Story #1 (Cover B Dwayne Biddix), $3.99 Star Bastard #6, $3.99 SOURCE POINT PRESS Boston Metaphysical Society #6, $3.99 Classic Pulp Horror #1 (One Shot), $4.00 Doll Island TP, $6.99 Gutter Magic #4 (Of 8), $3.99 Kringle TP, $6.99 Love She Offered TP, $9.99 Misplaced #2, $3.99 Ogres #2 (Of 4), $3.99 Seance Room #1 (Of 4), $3.99 Touching Evil #2 (Of 7), $3.99 TITAN BOOKS Man In The High Castle Creating The Alt World HC, $34.95 ZENESCOPE ENTERTAINMENT Grimm Fairy Tales #34 (Cover A Martin Coccolo), $3.99 Grimm Fairy Tales #34 (Cover B Julius Abrera), $3.99 Grimm Fairy Tales #34 (Cover C Hedwin Zaldivar), $3.99 Grimm Fairy Tales #34 (Cover D Igor Vitorino), $3.99 Hellchild Blood Money TP, $12.99 Van Helsing Vs Dracula's Daughter #5 (Of 5)(Cover A Igor Vitorino), $3.99 Van Helsing Vs Dracula's Daughter #5 (Of 5)(Cover B Martin Coccolo), $3.99 Van Helsing Vs Dracula's Daughter #5 (Of 5)(Cover C Nelly Jimenez), $3.99 Van Helsing Vs Dracula's Daughter #5 (Of 5)(Cover D Allan Otero), $3.99 Van Helsing Vs Dracula's Daughter #5 (Of 5)(Cover E Jason Metcalf), $3.99 TOYS - T-SHIRTS & COLLECTIBLES 30 Minute Mission 13 EEXM-17 Alto Black Model Kit, AR 30 Minute Mission 14 BEXM-15 Portanova Navy Model Kit, AR 30 Minute Mission Optional Backpack 1 Model Accessory, AR 30 Minute Mission Optional Commander Armor Set Alto Black, AR 30 Minute Mission Optional Commander Armor Set Alto White, AR Alien 40th Anniversary Big Chap 1/4 Scale Action Figure, AR Alien And Predator Classics 6 Inch Action Figure Assortment, AR Alter Nation Basic Action Figure, AR Alter Nation Medium Action Figure, AR Annabelle Ceramic Mug, AR Atelier Rorona Alchemist Of Arland Rorona Nendoroid Action Figure, AR BlazBlue Es 1/7 Scale PVC Figure, AR Borderlands 3 Male Psycho Bandit 7 Inch Vinyl Figure, AR Boys Collectible Homelander Two Dollar Bill, AR City Hunter The Movie Kaori Makimura Nendoroid Action Figure, AR Conjuring Universe Crooked Man Ultimate 7 Inch Action Figure, AR DC Comics Wheels Of Gotham 24 Piece Blind Mystery Box Capsule Assortment, AR DC The Joker Black Silk Tie, AR DC The Joker Ha Ha Navy Silk Tie, AR Digimon Amplified Wargreymon Figure-Rise Standard Model Kit, AR Dioramansion 150 Cavern Figure Diorama, AR Dioramansion 150 Imperial Capital Figure Diorama Daytime Ver, AR Dioramansion 150 Lake Bishamon Figure Diorama, AR Dragon Ball Super Chosenshi Retsuden V4 Super Saiyan 3 Son Goku Figure, AR Fang Of The Sun Dougram Combat Armors Max16 1/72 Scale Model Kit, AR Fantastic Four Legends 6 Inch Action Figure Assortment 202001, AR Fate Stay Night Heaven's Feel Saber Alter 2.0 Figma Action Figure, AR Friday The 13th Jason Voorhees Ceramic Mug, AR Ghostbusters Ghost Trap 1/1 Scale Prop Replica, AR Ghostbusters Winston Zeddemore 1/4 Scale Statue, AR Ghostface Ceramic Mug, AR Grand Jester Studios DC Superman 1/6 Scale Statue, AR Gundam Build Divers 05 Valkylander 1/144 HGBD Model Kit, AR Gundam Build Divers 06 Nu-zeon Gundam 1/144 HGBD Model Kit, AR Gundam Build Divers 08 Real Core Gundam 1/144 HGBD Model Kit, AR Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans Gundam Barbatos 1/100 MG Model Kit, AR Halloween Michael Myers Ceramic Mug, AR Hatsune Miku GT Pop Up Parade Racing Miku PVC Figure (2010 Version), AR Heavy Metal Taarna Bust Lapel Pin, AR Hellboy B.P.R.D. Logo And Right Hand Of Doom 8 Piece Patch Assortment, AR Hellboy Itty Bitty Hellboy And Abe Limited Edition Enamel Pin 6 Piece Assortment, AR Hellraiser Pinhead Ceramic Mug, AR Hunter X Hunter Gon And Kirua Mug, AR Hunter X Hunter Hisoka Mug, AR JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Chozo Kado Purple Haze Action Figure, AR JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Statue Legend Risotto Nero PVC Statue, AR JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Statue Legend White Album PVC Statue, AR Kaguya Luna Figma Action Figure, AR Legends In 3D Marvel Movie Thor Ragnarok Hulk 1/2 Scale Bust, AR Madballs Horrorballs Foam Series Chucky, AR Madballs Horrorballs Foam Series Pinhead, AR Mario Kart Collector Enamel Pin 24 Piece Assortment, AR Marvel Animated Venom And Spider-Man Statue, AR Marvel Animated X-Men Cyclops Bust, AR Marvel Gallery 90s Spider-Man PVC Figure, AR Marvel Vintage 80th Anniversary Deadpool 6 Inch Action Figure, AR Mashin Hero Wataru Plamax MS-05 Ryuomaru Model Kit, AR My Hero Academia Banpresto World Colosseum V2 Dabi Figure, AR My Hero Academia Ochaco Urarakai 1/8 Scale PVC Figure (Hero Suit Version), AR My Hero Academia Smash Collegiate Snapback Cap, AR My Hero Academia Titans Mini Figure 18 Piece Window Box Display, AR Mystery Minis Bandicoot 12 Piece Display, AR Nerf Rival Deadpool Kronos XVIII-500 Blaster, AR Nerf Rival Deadpool Kronos XVIII-500 Blaster 2 Pack, AR Nightmare On Elm Street Freddy Krueger Ceramic Mug, AR One Piece Grandista Trafalgar Law Manga Dim Figure, AR One Piece Grandline Men Wano Country Luffy DXF Figure, AR Pee Wee's Playhouse Chairry ReAction Figure, AR Pee Wee's Playhouse Conky ReAction Figure, AR Pee Wee's Playhouse Magic Screen ReAction Figure, AR Persona 5 Skull Figma Action Figure, AR Plamax MF-39 Minimum Factory Burney 1/20 Scale Model Kit (Makeup Edition), AR Plamax MF-41 Minimum Factory Allier 1/20 Scale Model Kit (Makeup Edition), AR Pocket POP MHA Deku With Helmet Keychain, AR POP Ad Icons Otter Pops Alexander the Grape Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Dragon Ball Z Goku Bu World Tournament Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation My Hero Academia Deku With helmet Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Rick And Morty Death Crystal Morty Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Rick And Morty Death Teddy Rick With Chase Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Rick And Morty Hologram Rick Clone Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Rick And Morty Kirkland Meeseeks Vinyl Figure, AR POP Animation Rick And Morty Wasp Rick Vinyl Figure, AR POP Games Overwatch Baptiste Vinyl Figure, AR POP Games Overwatch Bob 6 Inch Vinyl Figure, AR POP Marvel Endgame Thor With Pizza Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Greatest Showman Anne Wheeler Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Greatest Showman Bearded Lady Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Greatest Showman Phillip Carlyle Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Greatest Showman PT Barnum Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Us Abraham With Bat Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Us Adelaide With Chains And Fire Poker Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Us Pluto With Mask Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Us Red With Oversized Scissors Vinyl Figure, AR POP Movies Us Umbrae With scissors Vinyl Figure, AR POP PEZ Hercules Hades, AR POP PEZ Myths Bigfoot, AR POP PEZ Myths Cthulhu, AR POP PEZ Myths Yeti, AR POP TV The Office Michael Scott Vinyl Figure, AR POP TV Umbrella Academy Allison Hargreeves Vinyl Figure, AR Power Rangers Lightning Collection Mighty Morphin Power Rangers White Ranger Helmet, AR Power Rangers Lightning Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Red Ranger 6 Inch Action Figure, AR Puppet Master Originals 1/1 Scale Blade Replica, AR Puppet Master Originals 1/1 Scale Jester Replica, AR Saw Jigsaw Ceramic Mug, AR Spider-Man Mysterio Card T-Shirt XL, AR Spider-Man Mysterio Card T-Shirt XXL, AR Star Wars #1 Lithograph, AR Star Wars BB-8 Ceramic Mug, AR Star Wars Black Con Exclusive Luke Skywalker Celebration 6 Inch Action Figure, AR Star Wars Black Darth Vader Electronic Helmet, AR Star Wars Death Star Ceramic Mug, AR Star Wars E9 D-O Remote Control Toy, AR Star Wars Galaxy E9 5 Inch Scale Action Figure Assortment 201902, AR Star Wars Item B Bandai Spirits 1/12 Scale Model, AR Star Wars Item C Bandai Spirits Plastic Model Kit, AR Star Wars Item D Bandai Spirits Plastic Model Kit, AR Star Wars Range Trooper Bust, AR Star Wars Yoda Ceramic Mug, AR Super Mario Collector Enamel Pin 24 Piece Assortment, AR Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Bebop ReAction Figure, AR Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Rocksteady ReAction Figure, AR Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Christie Monteiro Bishoujo Statue (New Package Version), AR Texas Chainsaw Leatherface Ceramic Mug, AR Thor #1 Trading Card, AR Transformers Botbots Minifig Blind Mystery Box 201903, AR Transformers Generations Selects Lancer Deluxe Action Figure, AR Transformers Generations Selects Shockwave Leader Action Figure, AR Transformers Generations WFC Battlemaster Action Figure Assortment 201902, AR Transformers Generations WFC Micromaster Action Figure Assortment 201902, AR Transformers Generations WFC Micromaster Action Figure Assortment 201903, AR Yamato 2202 15 Cosmo Tiger II Bandai Spirits 1/72 Scale Model Kit, AR