Gotterdammerung (an opera review post)

My wife went to the opera, and all I got was this t-shirt...
Okay, well, that's not precisely true since I also went to the opera. In fact, I'm the one who wanted to go to this... exercise in endurance. Seriously, why does your butt hurt from sitting? Isn't that what it's made for?
Okay, maybe not.

But I digress...

For an opera named Twilight of the Gods, there are not a lot of gods in this one. In fact, an appearance by one lone Valkyrie is about as close to a god as we get, and the Valkyries, though immortal (other than Brunnhilde, who is no longer a Valkyrie), are not quite gods. It was kind of weird to not have Wotan show up at all, but he's gone and locked himself up inside of Valhalla -- along with all of the other gods -- and is waiting to burn it all down. Yeah, I'm not going to try to explain how we got to that point; you can go read a plot synopsis if you want to.

I think I should make it clear that Siegfried is an asshole. Sure, he's the greatest hero in the world, but that doesn't make it okay to be a blatant, flaming asshole. Which he is. Seriously. His go-to response to any and every situation, including just meeting someone, is, "Hey, I'm going to fight you!" Occasionally, he'd throw in, "...or we can be friends," but that isn't the norm.

And he's an abuser of women. Not like he beat them up or anything, but he definitely had that "I'm famous, so I can grab 'em by the pussy" attitude. At one point, the Rhinemaidens are trying to warn him that he needs to give up the Ring or he's going to be dead before the end of the day, and his response is, "I'll tell you what: Why don't all three of you have sex with me, then we can talk about the Ring." Of course, when they reject him, his response to that is, "Well, I'm faithful to my wife, anyway." His wife who is not Brunnhilde, because -- remember last post when I said he was stupid? -- he got tricked into drinking a potion that made him forget all about Brunnhilde, so he married someone else, a woman named Gutrune.

Toss into this mix Hagen. Hagen is the son of Alberich via the rape of Gutrune's mother and merely a tool of Alberich to try to reclaim the Ring. Because, evidently, that's the primary purpose of children: to be the tools by which you accomplish your own goals. At least that's what we can learn from Alberich, Mime, and Wotan. Oh, also, Hagen has a thing for his half-sister and keeps trying to put the moves on her.

It's all a very sordid affair and that's before Brunnhilde gets involved.

All of that to say that I didn't feel bad at all for Siegfried for what happens to him. Okay, maybe a little bad, but only because he has a moment of being horrified at what he's done to Brunnhilde once he regains his memory, just before he's... well, that would be telling. The problem is that he's regretful for the unintentional asshole move he made but, apparently, is perfectly okay with all of the other ways he's an asshole. Needless to say, Siegfried is a flawed hero, which is not a bad thing from a story perspective.

A thing I really liked in this production is the handling of the Rhine and the Rhinemaidens. Back in Das Rheingold when we first meet them, they are playing and cavorting in a pristine Rhine river. The world is young! Everything is fresh and good. But, when we find them again, here in Gotterdammerung, the Rhine is clogged with trash and pollution and the maidens seem to spend their time trying to get garbage out of their river. It was a very pointed touch, one I thought was great, especially now as we endure an administration that is doing everything it can to actively destroy the environment.

The most interesting aspect of Gotterdammerung is Brunnhilde's persistence in "punishing" Siegfried for the harm he did her even once she realizes it wasn't really his fault. But, then, some of what he did was because of whom he was as a person, which, as I've pointed out, wasn't all that great. So what wrongs does he do to Brunnhilde?
1. He compels her to have sex with him even after she has asked to remain pure. But she's cursed to obey his every order, so she can't actually turn him down when he presses the issue.
2. Once he's forgotten her, he enacts a subterfuge against her and gifts her to another man whom she is also compelled to obey through the curse on her.
3. You can surmise at that point that she has had to have sex with the second man, also against her will, though she would not have been able to actually tell him no. Thanks, Wotan!

The real tragedy in all of this is that Brunnhilde legitimately loves Siegfried. As she tells him, she loved him from before he was born. However, she doesn't let how she feels get in the way of what she feels is justice for his betrayal of her.

It was a good opera. All of them were.
I'd go back and do the 16 hours again. I think that says a lot.

The Long Climb (pictures I like)

Bouquet of Death (pictures I like)

eBay and what I'm selling this week (6/25)

Refer back to this post for the background.

Here's what I have going this week:

Yes, that's the first appearance of Deadpool. I know you want it. You can find it here.

Are you guilty? Find it here.

Or do you have fear?

Or have you gone COSMIC?

All that plus GI Joe comics, more of all those comics above, plus Mage Knight, and Lord of the Rings figures!

Go get some stuff!

Siegfried (an opera review post)

Ah, Siegfried, if only you had not been so stupid...
Perhaps.
But, then, opera contains a lot of tragedy, so maybe this was all inevitable.

However, it wasn't the dragon (pictured above) that will do him in, nor will he be done in in this opera.

You know, normally, battling a dragon isn't a thing you're going to see in a stage production. Normally, someone writing for a stage production, knowing how difficult it would be, is going to circumvent any dragon fighting on stage. Not Wagner. It makes me wonder how he staged this the first time it was performed. Not enough to do the research on it, but it does make me wonder. Of course, he did have a special theater built just for the Ring Cycle, so maybe I shouldn't wonder too hard.

Siegfried is the culmination of all of Wotan's meddling and impregnating women, the son of the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Maybe that accounts for his... lack... in the intellect department. Daniel Brenna does a great job with Siegfried's rather vacuous mode of being, a mode of being always looking for a fight, seemingly for no other reason than to fight. Maybe to prove that he's the best, but it seems he just approaches every situation with a "hey, let's fight" attitude. It doesn't hurt, I suppose, that he has a magic sword.

The fight with the dragon, Fafner, is important. Fafner is one of the giants from Das Rheingold; the one who ended up not dead and with the Ring. He's a dragon through the magic of the Tarnhelm, a shape he's taken to protect the Ring and his hoard of gold. So, just to be clear, Fafner has a ring which could allow him to rule the world and, yet, he's hiding in a cave in the form a dragon instead.

To flash back: Alberich, who forged the Ring, rather than using it to control the world, was busy using it to find more and more gold and amass it into a hoard, the hoard that Fafner is now protecting. At this point, I'm a bit hazy on what exactly the Ring does other than give the owner an extreme lust for gold.

Because it certainly doesn't save Fafner anymore than it saved Alberich from having Wotan cut it from his hand. But more on that later...

The best scene in this opera, possibly the best scene from the Cycle, happens just after Siegfried has defeated Fafner. See, Siegfried only fights the dragon because he was put up to it. Put up to it by his adopted father Mime, Alberich's brother, who lusts after the Ring and thinks he can outwit Siegfried to get the Ring if only Siegfried will kill the dragon. Honestly, this shouldn't have been very difficult to do but for one thing: Siegfried gains the temporary ability to hear Mime's thoughts and kills him instead. But David Cangelosi, as Mime, is fantastic in this scene. Every time he says something that comes out in words that reveal his true thoughts, his reaction is fabulous. It made me sad to see the character go.

But Mime is just another example of a "father" in this opera, using his "child" as a tool to achieve some selfish end. He needed to go.

Siegfried ends with Siegfried "rescuing" Brunnhilde, the former Valkyrie, from her "eternal" sleep, eternal being relative to however long it took a man to come along who was brave enough to walk through the flames to wake her with a kiss, so in this case about 20 years. Depending on how old Siegfried is. Of course, waking Brunnhilde just moves her along to the next portion of her punishment, the part where she has to marry the man who wakes and do whatever he commands of her.

So let's look back a moment:
Brunnhilde is Wotan's daughter, a previous immortal.
Siegfried is the grandson of Wotan twice over, since both of his parents were Wotan's kids. I believe that makes Brunnhilde Siegfried's aunt and, maybe, his cousin. It's actually a little confusing. At any rate, it's just a little more incest to add to the mix.
Oh, and, evidently, Brunnhilde is a virgin. At least, she goes on about how she's never been touched before for quite a while before she finally goes off with Siegfried to do the deed. What's a little incest among gods, um, ex-gods, right?

Just to be clear here, I'm leaving a lot of the plot out, because you can always look up the plot if you want to. My focus is on the production, themes, and pivotal moments. What I know for sure is that the Ring Cycle is a complex piece of work and I walked out of it, all 16 hours of it, being willing to go through that again for another viewing. There was no point where I was bored or felt like I was wasting my time.

Die Walkure (an opera review post)

"Ride of the Valkyries" is one of the most famous pieces of music in the world. It's entirely memorable, and it's been used in everything from Apocalypse Now to Looney Tunes, so it would be surprising if you've never heard it. I have to say, the arrival of the Valkyries in this production was amazing. They came in by parachute! Okay, not exactly literally, but they "fell from the sky." On parachutes. Amazing.

The Valkyrie is a jump ahead from The Rhinegold. Some unspecified amount of time jump. Long enough ahead that Wotan has a whole slew of kids, all grown up and immortal. Well, most of them are immortal. Two of them, twins, are the offspring of some mortal woman Wotan decided to have a fling with and are not, therefore, immortal. And they don't seem to have gained any specific benefits by having a god as a father, either. Fricka, Wotan's wife, isn't happy about any of Wotan's offspring, since none of them are hers, but she's especially not happy about Siegmund, one of the twins. He's Wotan's favorite and, evidently, the only male offspring Wotan has. At least, he's the only male mentioned.

Still, everything might have been fine except... well... Look, Siegmund and Sieglinde were separated as young children and hadn't seen each other in, like, two decades when they came across each other. It's not exactly their fault that it was love at first sight. Except that, after talking about their fathers, they come to realize it's the same father and realize they're twins and, instead of having an "ewww! gross!" response, they're like, "We're twins! Even better!" As my wife put it: twincest.

And thus ends Act One.

Which left us with a crawly feeling and me wondering if we were somehow watching Flowers in the Attic by mistake. I mean, was this a thing Wagner felt was okay?

But, no... Well, at least, maybe not. Act II does pick up with Fricka questioning the morality of twincest. Of course, she's using it as a ploy because she hates Siegmund, and Wotan defends the relationship because "they're in love." It's difficult to know where Wagner actually stood on the issue from the content of the opera (and I'm not going to go researching Wagner's life, at the moment; I don't care about it that much). At any rate, it's an interesting plot point for the opera, especially since everything that happens after could have been accomplished if the twins had, well, not been twins.

The real takeaway from Die Walkure is that Wotan is a horrible father. He abandoned Siegmund and Sieglinde before they were old enough to know who he was, and he doesn't have any care at all for Sieglinde. Siegmund might be his favorite, but it's only from a distance. His other children, the Valkyries, are just tools in his quest to fill Valhalla with heroes with which to defend it. Brunnhilde is the only one of his children with whom he has any kind of relationship, and he uses her more harshly than any of the rest, in the end stripping her of her immortality -- among other things -- and that was a punishment for her doing what it was that Wotan wanted her to do.

Yeah... Harsh.

Greer Grimsley is one of the best opera performers I've seen at this point. Wotan is an asshole. Wait. Wotan is an Asshole. And, yet, Grimsley manages to play the character in such a way so that he's also sympathetic. He's doing horrible things to people and manipulating... everything... and you feel bad for the guy. It's like in Infinity War when Thanos throws Gamora down in the pit as a sacrifice except Grimsley makes you feel bad for Wotan as he's cursing Brunnhilde. I never felt bad for Thanos. Huh. There's a lot in the whole Infinity War plot that very much resembles the Ring Cycle. What did I tell you about the influence on pop culture this piece has had?

Thanks for Noticing Me (pictures I like)

From the Mist (pictures I like)

Won't You Join Me? (pictures I like)

Das Rheingold (an opera review post)

Let's start out be stealing a quote from a completely unrelated story:
"...this, like any other story worth telling, is all about a girl."
Or, in this case, three girls.
At least, that's where it starts.

Das Rheingold is interesting in that it was the last part of the story Wagner conceived. Actually, he worked his way backwards, having first thought of the arc's ultimate climax, then filling in the required backstory as he wrote. Das Rheingold is considered a prologue, so it's not entirely necessary to the rest of the arc, but it does provide some pretty interesting background.

The opera opens with the three Rhine maidens cavorting in a river, which, I suppose, is what Rhine maidens do. Their actual task is to guard the Rhine gold, but that seems to be a rather boring and thankless task, so they spend their time playing games in the water. This is what Alberich finds them doing when he stumbles upon them.

This is a recipe for conflict from the very beginning. See, Alberich is a dwarf from Nibelung, which is to say that Alberich is not handsome. That doesn't stop him from being smitten by the scantily clad water sprites playing in the river, and he decides he's going to catch one and make her his own. To say this is in direct conflict with the desires of the maidens is an understatement. Not only do they not wish to "be caught" by him but, upon noticing him and how ugly he is, they decide to have some "fun" with him, which is to say that they decide to torment him with their beauty.

There's a good analogy here for today's incel movement. Putting aside the fact that the maidens are deliberating torturing him through their flirtatious ways, Alberich has already decided that he deserves to have them. Or at least one of them. How they feel about it doesn't matter to him; he feels that he has been denied something his by right because none of the three want him.

But that would have been the end of it except for the Rhine gold.

The Rhine gold is not like normal gold. It has magical properties that can allow the possessor of the gold to forge a magic ring that will give him absolute power. The only catch is that, to forge the ring, the smith must curse love and forsake it forever. After his treatment at the hands of the maidens -- or his lack of treatment at their hands, if you know what I mean -- Alberich decides that's not such a bad deal, curses love, and steals the gold. Besides, once he's become king of the world, he can compel them to have sex with him, no love required.

This, also, sounds like the men of the incel movement. And here's where I point out that Alberich is the villain in this story. Or, at least, a villain. These guys are not heroes, no matter how wronged they feel they've been.

All of that is just the beginning, maybe the first 25 minutes or so, which is way more synopsis than I usually like to give, but I wanted to make a point. Needless to say, much of the rest of the action revolves around the Ring that Alberich forges.

This particular production was great, even better than the one I mentioned that we watched on dvd. The staging was better. The actors were better. The sets were better. In particular, the character of Loge (Loki) was better. I'm sure, at least in part, this was due to the actor, Stefan Margita, who is wonderful, but it's also choices of presentation of the character by the director, Francesca Zambello. Loge is definitely my favorite character in Das Rheingold. Greer Grimsley, as Wotan (Odin), is also a step up from the other production and is pretty amazing.

But, then, the San Francisco Opera can generally be counted on for delivering great performances.

Kill the Wabbit! or Anticipating The Ring

Opera...

Most people don't give opera a second thought. Or a first thought, for that matter. I mean, it's kind of a dead form of entertainment, right? That's certainly what I used to think about it. And you could make a case for that, I suppose, since it's a relatively limited form of entertainment. Not that it has to be that way, but it requires a lot of training and, well, there are all sorts of things I could get into about this, but none of it's what this post is about, so we can have that discussion some other time.

However, despite the fact that opera has become rather exclusive, it has influenced popular culture in ways people are unaware of and don't understand. Just the influence in music is unmistakable, and I don't even know that much about music or music history, but you can find pieces of opera music in, well, everything. Okay, maybe not everything, but it's fairly pervasive. But it's not just music, though I don't have the background (and am not going to do the research right now) to tell you how far the reach of opera is.

I do know enough, though, to be able to say that it's possible that Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle is the foundation of... well, a tremendous amount of our current pop culture. Or at least related to it.

Which brings me to the point: The San Francisco opera is doing the Ring Cycle! [Actually, by the time this posts, I will be in the middle of watching this, but, as I write this, I'm still a day away from Das Rheingold, the prologue to the cycle.] I'm very excited to see this. All 16 hours of it. Yeah, you heard me: 16 hours! Don't worry; it's divided into four operas presented on four, almost consecutive evenings (though there are opera houses who present the cycle in one marathon performance!).

In preparation for this (this is such a big deal, you have to buy tickets a year in advance!), my wife got me a copy of Das Rheingold for Christmas. It's a dvd of a revolutionary production of the cycle. We only just last week sat down and finally watched it, and the threads of influence are almost immediately apparent. I'll tell you the big three, which should be self-explanatory enough for you to get what I mean about it being foundational: The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel Comics. Not to mention Bugs Bunny. It was well worth the watch even if I hadn't like it.

But I did like it! It was a good and interesting story and it's too bad that people are so unfamiliar with it these days.

One thing of note: The opera is done recitative. I'm pretty sure there are no arias in the entire thing. If you've followed my opera reviews at all, you'll know that I pretty typically do not like operas done entirely recitative. Generally speaking, this is due to the music more than the actual style. For some reason, post-Wagner operas done recitative tend to have very droning music with very little melody that -- for me, anyway -- makes it difficult to stay focused. It's like a very aggressive way to put people to sleep. But that wasn't the case with Das Rheingold. Despite the recitative quality, the music was very melodic, soaring in places, even. I wonder what changed with people after Wagner. Or maybe it's just a matter of skill? I don't know.

I do know, though, that I'm pretty sure that opera should not be a thing of the past.

Prey with Me (pictures I like)

Music of the Spheres (pictures I like)

Stairway to... Green? (pictures I like)

Rebels: "The Forgotten Druid" (Ep. 2.19)

-- Chopper, we're not here to shop.

One thing seeing Solo has done for me is renewed my interest in Rebels, not that my interest had waned, I just haven't had a lot of extra time, lately, for watching anything. But, after the reveal at the end of the movie, I was reminded I needed to get back on this show. And, then, one of the first things my son said to me as we left the theater was, "Dad, we need to start watching Rebels again." Apparently, I couldn't agree more.

Historically, episodes centered around droids have not been my favorites, which is unfortunate since I really love R2 and 3PO. They just never seem to stand up to the spotlight being directly on them. Such was not the case with Chopper. Not this time, anyway. And it seems the writers wanted to give us a bit about Chopper's backstory.

The stuff dealing with droids and their societal condition is pretty interesting, all things considered, and this episode was a good one to go along with the recentness of Solo because of it. Chopper becomes... acquainted... with an Imperial protocol droid, and it's immediately clear that there is a marked difference between the condition of the droids on the rebel side -- or, at least, Chopper (and R2 and 3PO) -- and the droids on the Imperial side:

Free will sounds nice. I admire your fortitude.

It's good to be reminded that the droids are sentient beings and that their restraining bolts serve as nothing more than slave collars.

And, sure, the droids are manufactured beings, but is it okay to enslave a sentient being even if it's a being you built? It's an interesting question and one I'm sure we're soon going to be dealing with on a practical level and not just a hypothetical one.

"The entire rebel fleet is betting on Chopper."

"Yeah, try not to think about it."

Issues in Story Telling: Marked by a Lack of Tragedy

Those of you who keep up with this sort of thing probably already know that Solo has been under performing as a Star Wars movie and is looking to come in as the lowest grossing Star Wars film ever. Considering the subject matter, everyone's favorite smuggler, this is rather surprising. And alarming. It's caused some pondering on my part.

I thought it was a fine movie. Enjoyable. But I didn't love it. "Fine" is not a great recommendation for a Star Wars film, not from me, at any rate. Of course, the problem is that it's not getting a lot of love from... anywhere. The big question, then, is why.

I think I know the answer. Which is not the answer that everyone else is giving; all of those answers have to do with the problems on set, the firing of the original directing duo, and the fact that something like 70% of the movie had to be re-shot. The actual answer is much simpler: The movie is marked by a lack of tragedy.

It's not that every movie needs to have some kind of tragedy, but, I think, Star Wars movies do. They, at least, need to have that feel that there's something that could be lost, and that's true for most all stories. The risk of loss is what provides the tension in a story. Even when you know everything's going to turn out all right in the end, there needs to be that feeling of risk involved. That just doesn't exist in Solo.

Really, the whole movie can be summed up by that first game of sabaac. Han enters the game with nothing. He can't even get into it without someone else fronting him the money to get a seat at the table, which she does because... I don't know. As a business venture, it wasn't wise, because the only thing she has to go on is Han's word, "I can take him." (Or something to that effect.) So Han's in the game with absolutely nothing to lose. It doesn't matter that he wins enough to have a stack of money in front of him; if he loses, he's no worse off than he started.

And he does lose. But, you know, big deal. And Lando doesn't seem to care, either, that he doesn't have the ship he claimed to have which he'd put up against the Falcon in their final hand. It just doesn't come up again.

At any rate, you can't feel bad for Han's loss because he had nothing to lose, nor can you be upset at Lando for cheating, because Han was cheating, too, even if not so directly as having a card up his sleeve.

And you can't feel too badly for the loss of Han's "friends," either, since those relationships were about as real as the ship Han lost to Lando during their game of sabaacc. They're not friends just because you declare them so, no matter how much the writers wanted us to believe it. Tobias just doesn't become a Qui-Gon and there's no sense of loss when he dies; it doesn't matter that Han pulled the trigger. In fact, it's probably because Han pulls the trigger that, as the audience, we're so easily able to shrug it off.

I just wish it didn't make the movie so easy to shrug off, which I think it is. That's disappointing to me from a Star Wars movie. The franchise seems to have lost its way without Lucas at its head to give it an overall vision. Which isn't to say that it has to be Lucas doing that, but someone needs to do it. This "let each director do what he wants" shit isn't working out. Someone needs to bring balance back to the Force before its the loss of Star Wars itself that is the tragedy.

Hi, Rob! (pictures I like)

Need a Lyft? (pictures I like)

Or was that an Uber?

Corpse (pictures I like)

The Man in the High Castle (a book review post)

As I've said previously, any good adaptation should make you at least curious about the source material, hopefully beyond, "Oh, it was based on some book," though I'm sure, people in general not being much for reading, that's where most people stop. But not me!

And, well, looking at the list of books PKD wrote, I can see that I haven't read enough of his works anyway.

Let's just get it out of the way that the Amazon series is only loosely based on the book, which is fine when that's what you set out to do and how you present it. The series, being a format which is ongoing, is able to do a little bit more with some of the concepts Dick introduced. But don't think that if you've watched the series that you have any idea of what the book is really about. You should definitely read the book.

The obvious premise of the book has to do with what the world might be like if the Axis powers had won World War II. That's a frightening thought, isn't it? What would the world be like under a totalitarian rule that covered most of the planet? It's a theme that unexpectedly resonates with our current political climate. Unexpectedly, because we all thought we had put that kind of shit behind us long ago, but here we are with a president (#fakepresident) with all of the leanings of a fascist dictator. If only, you know, people (Democrats) would just get out of his way and let him take over the world.

But I digress...

The book is fascinating on many levels, but Dick's use of language is one of the most interesting aspects. The characters are loosely grouped into two categories: the Japanese and the German, though the individual characters are not necessarily Japanese or German. When the focus is on one of the characters in the Japanese group, the prose (not just the dialogue) is stilted. There's a noticeable lack of articles. The dialogue and prose when centered on one of the German-side characters is fairly standard. There also seems to be a difference in thought processes from one side to the other, but it's possible that's just the prose speaking.

Then there are the characters: a Jew hiding out in Japanese territory under an assumed name, which is still not safe, because the Japanese and Nazis are ostensibly allies and it's routine for Jews to get sent to Germany for extermination when discovered; a "white," which is how the Japanese think of Americans in the part of America they control (just a white), small business owner who is enamored of Japanese culture and thinks they deserve to be in charge; a Swedish businessman on a trade mission to San Francisco; and more, but that should give you a taste. Almost none of the characters are precisely what they seem, though, an experience possibly like pulling on a rope only to find out it's a snake as it gets closer to you.

There's also a question as to what is or what constitutes reality, something Dick frequently does. You can see this just by looking at the basic question, "What would it be like if the Axis powers had won World War II?" But, within the book, there is a book which asks the question, "What would it be like if the Allied powers had won World War II?" The different perspectives on the answer to that question are interesting, to say the least, and they're not always what you would expect.

Maybe not as much as, say, 1984 or Brave New World, but this is definitely a book for our time and definitely worth a read. And I'm again reminded that I should really explore of PKD's works.

Cleaning My Garage and What I'm Selling

I may have mentioned at some point that I'm working on cleaning out my garage. That's not a process that's as easy as it sounds as my garage is full of comics, action figures, gaming supplies (including a multitude of Magic cards), and other collectibles. It's not like I can just throw everything away. Okay, well, I could, but that would be rather foolish. At any rate, for the last six months or so, I've been selling stuff off on ebay. It's a slow process.

Mostly, I'm fine with that.
Mostly.

BUT!

I realized that I don't really know who all comes across my blog and that it's a wasted opportunity not to promote here what I'm selling at any given moment.

So...

This is not an all inclusive list (by far) of what I have on ebay at the moment, but it's a good example. If you're interested, you can click through and look through the complete current auction list. Also, feel free to inquire if you have specific things you're looking for, especially comics or Magic cards (which is not to say that I will have specific things immediately on hand, but it will at least let me know what to be looking for as move through my stuff (maybe I'll post some pics of the disaster area that is my garage at some point)).

Since Darth Maul is back, let's start there! The picture is above.
Darth Maul action figure

Spectacular Spider-Man #1 is not currently on auction, but I do have it for sale. You can follow this link to issue #64, the first appearance of Cloak & Dagger! Their new series airs this month, I believe.

Like Lord of the Rings?
Well, I have a nice selection of figures available, right now.

Pop over to this link of the Aragorn figure and check them out. Remember, you can check out all of the auctions I have up through the link on ebay.

There's a bunch of Mage Knight and other things available, too!
These auctions are mostly scheduled to end tomorrow, so get your bids in now!
Or contact me directly.

Also, my books are always for sale! Hop over to my Amazon page and pick up something today!