World's Greatest Super Hero Cups - Mission Accomplished

In my last post, I mentioned how I'd searched for any information on these 1.5" plastic cups I would get from the vending machines at Ames, during my childhood in the late 70s/early 80s. But I always came up blank. And for a long time I figured that maybe they all had just been destroyed or lost. They were terribly fragile, and so many items of my youth went MIA with no discernible reason that it seemed plausible. Until early this year, when I finally unlocked the Google Search Code [TM]. 

Then I started scouring eBay and Etsy and Google, hunting down any of these cups I could find (knowing, as revealed in the previous post, that there were 12 total to acquire). I quickly managed to snag 10 of the 12. Unsurprisingly, the two that were proving elusive were the female characters -- Wonder Woman and Batgirl. Now, there was a Batgirl cup for sale on eBay, but it was priced at $99.99. I had been paying between $3-7 each for these cups; no way was I shelling out a hundred bucks for Batgirl. It was a quandary . . . 

I continued to do my searches, though, and discovered an eBay listing for the full collection of only 12 stickers, plus 4 stickers from the Marvel cups offered in 1978. These were priced at $244.95. Ha! No way! But . . . that got me thinking I should search for the stickers, because it would be nice to have a full set of those, in addition to the cups. This turned up a listing at the Superman Store for the full set of stickers -- 10 bucks on sale; done! At this point, a plan started to form in my brain. 

I decided to order two sets of the stickers from the Superman Store, which was still less than 10% of the cost for the full set on eBay, and less than a dollar per sticker -- so, a good deal. I then put in an offer on a listing of a pair of these cups with characters I already had, and the seller accepted. Once those two cups arrived, as well as the sticker sets, I put my plan into action. Peeling the stickers from the duplicate cups, which was surprisingly easy, I then applied the Wonder Woman and Batgirl stickers to the now naked cups, and voila, a full set was born. 

I gotta say, putting together this small set of cups from when I was seven years old was incredibly satisfying. I'm so happy to have them as part of my "full-to-bursting" collection of comics, Star Wars toys, statues, posters, prints, original art, et al. 

Excelsior!

Colored version

and here is the final version of my Aquaman piece for the Comic Geek Speak secret Santa list:

enjoy,
chris

Inks

Yesterday I threw up the pencils for my Secret Santa sketch at the CGS boards. Today, the inked version.

Enjoy,
chris

some amateur art

So,

I'm participating in a "Secret Santa" activity over at the Comic Geek Speak boards. You put your name on the list, one of the other members "draws the names," and for whomever you get, you draw a sketch of their choosing (regardless of artistic talent) and send them 3 comics from your collection. This is the first year I've been involved, and it's a pretty cool idea. And, I thought I would share the evolution of my sketch, which was for any JLA character. and, since I've enjoyed his characterization on the few Brave and the Bold cartoons I've seen, I went with Aquaman.

Here is my initial penciled version for the sketch. Hope you enjoy.

chris