Talking Of Santa Claws

I Shan't Get A Better Time For This For Another Year

"This" being the Christmas season, where jolly old Saint Nick does his reverse-burglary event on a global scale, unless he gets shot down over Modern-day Mordor by an S-300 battery whose commander is drunk again, or NORAD goes off half-cocked.

     Initially I was going to go with "Claws" but then realised that there are a few Bad Santas out there, including a couple that are quite relevant.  Art!

     You can stretch a point and call those things at the end of it's arms 'claws', because that's what poetic licence is for.  There is also that hideous enormous robot Santa we featured a couple of weeks ago.  Art!

     Using an image from "Bad Santa" itself would be cheating, so instead have a glimpse of the - hmmm, not sure what to call it, Big Horny? from "Rare Exports".  Art!

     Probably the ultimate anti-Christmas film, and very typical of the dark souls who inhabit the land of lakes and forests that we call 'Finland'.  Art!

     
     Santa's little helpers look a bit too depraved and dangerous to be trusted, hence the cage.

     ANYWAY that is only by way of a preamble, forsooth, because we are moving on from 'Santa' and dealing only with Claws.  Hopefully I'll have enough mental material to keep going without recourse to crabs and lobsters.  Now, how many of you are familiar with "The Perils Of Penelope Pitstop"?  Okay, okay, you can both put your hands down.  Art!

     This was a spin-off from "Wacky Races", wherein young Pauline was forever encountering peril, because <takes deep breath> she inherited the gigantic fortune her immensely wealthy parents left her, along with a guardian, Sylvester Sneekly, who planned to murder her and (somehow, not sure if South Canadian inheritance laws would permit) acquire her riches, but to maintain deniable plausibility he disguises himself as -

     I AM GETTING TO IT!

     - "The Hooded Claw".  I don't know why, he appears to have two perfectly functional hands.  Art!

Looks mighty like a hat to Conrad.  Ah, what do I know about fashion?

     Unfortunately for Penelope, her close protection squad turned out to be The Ant Hill Mob, a coterie of diminutive gangsters who exemplified the word 'inept'.

     Sylvester got a late claim to fame when name-checked as "the Hooded Claw" in a Frankie Goes To Hollywood song, though I don't care enough to find out which.  Art!

     Oh.  This is not what I expected when I prodded our Neanderthal art editor into semi-sentience with a red-hot poker.  Hmmmm <digs deeper> you cannot tell from this poster, so allow me to bring up a more accurate one.  Art!

     I don't think you'd be able to get away with a schlocky title like that today, it would have to be "The Vanadium-Alloy Prosthesis" or somesuch.  Art!

     That's more like it!  This was a comic strip in "Valiant", with an excellent pedigree.  Ken Bulmer was a proper sci-fi author, and Blasco's artwork was excellent.

     "The Steel Claw" concerned one Louis Crandell, a humble lab assistant who lost his right hand in an explosion, and who used a steel prosthetic replacement.  It was pretty spiffy for a Sixties steel hand, able to mimic the normal range of motion of any Hom. Sap. hand.  Proving that lightning, and strange laboratory beam devices, can strike twice, Crandell was irradiated by an experimental ray gun.  Art!

     Conrad is unsure quite how Louis came to discover that, if he was electrocuted, he became temporarily invisible, bar his steel 'claw'.  What is undeniable, mind, is that he could coolly take a current that would turn you or I into charcoal sticks.

     Initially, Louis abused his abilities and became a proficient criminal, until his conscience and the editor made him repent and work for the forces of good.

     It was a very popular series across the globe and Conrad still recalls the creepy strip published in a "Valiant" annual, where a helicopter's nose was painted in fluorescent dyes to imitate a giant flying skull .....

Juice junkie?

      I would just like to round this Intro off with another set of claws, of far lower class than Mister Crandell, a bit of a turkey in fact.  Art!

     A lot of a turkey, in fact.  Redeemed by the presence of one Mara Corday, that sultry screen siren whom Art has a pash for.  Art!  Art, focus and stop drooling and daydreaming!

     Moving swiftly along - 

If I Were To Say "Kronos"

Then, inspired and led by the femme fatale of Fifties creature-features above, you might well be deceived into thinking Conrad was yarking on about - Art!

     Alas no.  No, what we're talking about here is more along the lines of the Kronos (or Cronos) of classical mythology, who was driven by madness to devour his own offspring, which ghastly event has been replicated with considerable brio by artists of past eras.  Art!

Not going to enlarge

     What am I prevaricating about?  O I thought you'd never ask!  My dodgy analogies come from recent news brought by messenger with cleft stick from Modern-day Mordor, where the shadows (and every other institution) lie.  Art!

How to strangle cats the Elvira Nabuillina way!

     Poor Elvira.  She did try to resign at the beginning of the Special Idiotic Operation, only to be told "NO!" by Putinpot, because she needed to prop up the Ruffian economy, which she has been doing with marked success for nearly three years.  However - welcome back my favourite word! - you can only stave off an economic tsunami for so long, and that time seems to have expired, for Conrad can see no other reason that she is being targeted for sacking.  

     One reason may be that November's figures for inflation in Ruffia were released recently, or at least the grossly inaccurate official ones were, and SURPRISE SURPRISE! the rate has increased to 8.95%, up from 8.5%, despite eye-watering levels of interest.

     Ooops.

     How that plan going, Dimya?

Whilst Talking Of Nightmares -

Let us continue to follow the artistic progress of Bernie, as he totally nailed it for FPG's "Masters of the Macabre" waaaaaaay back in 1993.  First, due diligence.  Is #47 "Drop In Any Time" available?

     No.

     O well, let's go with #48 "The Oz Effect", which is.  Art!

     Ah, I see, nothing to do with Australia and everything to do with dissolving when impacted by a bucket of water.  Or, in this case, opalescent slime.

"Sui Generis"

I do apologise for this, it being one of those things that teleport into my mind from beyond the stars, or at least beyond Royton.  It hit me whilst I was climbing the stairs to my Sekrit Layr.

     'Sounds Latin,' I told myself.

     'Agreed.  Ought we to ignore or investigate?' I asked me.

     'Put it to bed and find out what it is,' I replied.

     'Are we confusing the readers?' 

     'Probably.  But it's not as if they have to pay to read this scrivel.'  Art!

     'Sui generis', you see, means 'One of a kind', 'Unique' and what do we know of in the blogosphere that fits exactly that definition?  Art!

     I think Art needs to go lie down.  In a bathtub full of electric eels.

Appomatox Court House

No!  This is not a reality television show dealing with a judge and jury deliberating on criminal miscreants.

     No, this is a location and name Conrad had heard vaguely, associating it with the end of the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness.  Art!

      That's the Court House.  It was very emphatically associated with the end of this particular Unpleasantness, just nowhere near how Conrad imagined.  We may come back to this; all I was looking for was a picture to add to the Count by, and now we have a potential Item if not an Intro in the offing.

Finally -

I cannot promise to not include more Intros and items about steel and iron, because if I've done the research, Dog Buns! then you can jolly well enjoy the fruits of it.  If 'enjoy' is a slightly adjustable term.  I am working on an industrial accident involving cranes, if that whet's your appetite, and even if it doesn't.