Another Letter to Virginia

[Stephen Whiteside]

I missed the comment about the Phantom. Comics were great, too. Not so much the Phantom for me, but definitely Superman and Batman. Some of them were so weird. I remember Batman and Superman working together in one comic - which was odd, because they were supposed to inhabit parallel universes.

There was a particularly memorable story where Superman had to fight an 'anti-Superman' who constantly created mayhem that Superman had to put right. To me that summed up the whole Superman myth pretty well, which is why all those superhero films have such a fascist flavour, I think.

My favourite was 'The Flash'. He was so cool.

When I was working in St Kilda in the 80s I came across a safe sex advertising campaign featuring a Phantom alternative - 'Condoman'!

[william williams]

Hi Stephen I noticed you said you worked at St Kilda wasn't it the Melbourne version of Kings Cross no wonder the CONDOMAN was such a hit

bill williams

[Stephen Whiteside]

Yeah, you're right on the money there, Bill!

[Vic Jefferies]

Loved Lionel Long, Stephen but unfortunately a lot of people did not. Whether it was sour grapes or pure envy I do not know but many in the folk scene at the time considered him too "commercial!"
I though he was a great talent as a singer and actor and regretted hearing that he died in 1998.

[Stephen Whiteside]

Thanks for that, Vic.

[David Campbell]

Stephen: Are you sure that Condoman wasn't simply advertising apartments?

David

[Vic Jefferies]

Bob, whether Santa is real or not is one thing but to suggest that The Ghost Who Walks is in danger of being subjected to similar speculation is something entirely different. I know he is real and to this day still have a treasured collection of his comics. At one time I had a Phantom ring with eyes that glowed in the dark that I used to wear to the pictures on Saturday afternoon and look at when the lights went down. I think it cost threepence or it may have been sixpence, but you had to fill in the coupon on the back page of the comic and send it away to receive the ring. When I got older, about twelve, I went through the same procedure to obtain a gold coloured ring with ruby eyes! It cost one and sixpence! That was a lot of dough!

[Stephen Whiteside]

The poster doesn't look like he's selling apartments!

[Stephen Whiteside]

Actually, you can find my old friend here:
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov./ps/retriev ... ata/VCBBGY

[Robyn]

Ah Stephen, we had a Lionel Long record when I was a child... sounds similar to yours. And we also had Leonard Teale. I always thought they were great.
Robyn