Colouring Book Theater: Wonder Woman Faces the Menace of the Mole Men!

Time to crack open another vintage colouring book and see the madness inside!

Wonder Woman faces the Menace of the Mole Men!

This book is from 1975 and is available in two sizes, in previous CBT segments I've reviewed the Batman and Shazam books in this series.

The first thing I want to point out is how much I love how angry Wonder Woman is on the cover, the male heroes are all smiling but not Diana!




So grab your crayons and check out this adventure after the jump! 

Colouring Book Theatre: Shogun Warriors starring Great Mazinga

It's been a long time since I did a CBT here at PlaidStallions but yesterday I found a treasure trove of books at a local shop including this gem.

I love the Shogun Warriors colouring books because they're kind of nuts but in a real good way. 

They were the creation of Canadian cartoonist Owen McCarron (who also created the Marvel "Fun and Games" comic) and it's painfully obvious that he was probably given no back story to the characters and free reign to do whatever he wanted.

So he just had fun with it, it's so super absurd with no thought to scale or science that just kind of has a wonderful childlike charm to it. I imagine very few kids would complain.

 Check it out after the jump and when you're done, check out this other book from the series.

Colouring Book Theatre: Six Million Dollar Man

The Six Million Dollar Man: Coloring Book By Saalfield  (1975), 

         I've done Six Million Dollar Man books before by Saalfield, but I always enjoy another dip into the Bionic Craze.

Colouring books are usually a mixed bag depending on what reference materials they give the artist, this may be the first time I can accurately deduce exactly what the artist had to work with.

Grab your crayons and beam down me after the jump

Colouring Book Theatre: Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica: Adventure Activiy Book by Grosset and Dunlap

I stumbled on this book over the holidays and that's good because i didn't know it even existed prior to that.

The artwork is credited to Tony Tallarico, a busy guy in comics and coloring books in the 60s and 70s (most famously for drawing those Dell "monsters as superheroes" comics which I am a fan of) who is quite capable of good work.

I'm really not sure what happened here but I have several theories.

Grab your crayons and still suit and join me after the jump

Colouring BooK Theatre: Spiderman's Christmas

Spider-Man's Christmas: Giant Story Colouring Book by Marvel Books

I found this book at a flea market the other and seeing how it's Christmas, I spent the money and nabbed this gigantic book from 1984.

It's done in '84 by the Marvel Bullpen so it's nicely done rip of the Parkes Run books from the 70s.

Grab your crayons and still suit and join me after the jump

colouring book theatre: The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk: Giant Story Colouring Book by Parkes Run

I recently discovered photos of this book, taken in 2011 at my pal Jeff's store Kool Stuff Toys. Parkes Run made these giant  books in the late 70s and I remember getting at least one for Christmas.

In order to use this for CBT I propped it up against a chair and photographed it, so today's feature is a little wonky but still a fun look at this nicely drawn but sparsely written book.

Grab your crayons and still suit and join me after the jump

Colouring Book Theatre: Star Trek color and activity book

The Amazing Spider-Man: "Star Trek Color and Activity book" by Merrigold Press

If anybody has been reading the blog, you'll know I pretty much adore Star Trek coloring books, mostly because a) They're terrible and b) often hilarious (see this for more)

When I bought this book it seemed familiar but I swore I'd never done it, that isn't totally true. This reprinted book is the other half of the story of "Rescue at Rylo" which I have reviewed here and commented that it made no sense.

That's because Merrigold Press broke the story into two pieces when they recycled it for the launch of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Not a single kid probably cared, nor should, but I needed the closure.



Grab your crayons and still suit and join me after the jump

Colouring Book Theatre: The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man: "Spider-Man Unmasked" by Marvel Books

Recently a reader commented that I have never met a colouring book I didn't hate.

He was kidding but it did strike me that even though everything I do is done out of love, it does seem like i love to crap on them.

I'll counter that I'm drawn to the train wrecks for their comic potential but in the interest of fairness, I present a book that I have nothing but nice things to say about.

Published in 1983 by Marvel itself, this book retells the story of "Amazing Spider-Man #39" in coloring book format and well, they do a good job.

Grab your crayons and still suit and join me after the jump

Colouring Book Theatre: Dune Activity Book

DUNE: Puzzles, Games, Mazes and Activities

This is my third pass (you can read parts one and two here) at Dune coloring books or as I like to call them, "Comedy Gold" . 

The book promises you can "relive all excitement and adventure from the movie" but as we all know, crosswords and poorly thought out games rarely do that, even with good subject matter.

This is in no way a poke at the quality of the film but more of a comment on the weird belief it was somehow marketable to children.

Dune is a dark, often gory ride with a narrative that would confuse a lot of kids. Yet, licensing people sold it as the next Star Wars and here we are.

The other reason I keep returning to Arakis (see what I did there?) is the hope I find a colouring book page of Sting in his metal underwear, I WILL FIND YOU!

Grab your crayons and still suit and join me after the jump

Colouring Book Theatre: UFO Seeing is Believing

UFO: Seeing is Believing Coloring Book
By Whitman 1978

Another colouring book I found rummaging through  Planet of the Stuff a couple of weeks ago. Not to be confused with the Gerry Anderson UFO coloring book we covered a few months back.

Whitman had quite the little cottage industry capitalizing on the UFO craze in the late 60s/early 70s. A quick scan of Ebay reveals comics and puzzles bearing that beautiful art like this cover.

I'm assuming this book is made up of abridged comic stories, the majority of them don't make a lot of sense, due to the format.

Let's take a look at this after the jump...

Colouring Book Theater: Valley of the Dinosaurs

Valley of the Dinosaurs

I haven't done a CBT at all this year, so I'm glad I found this book whilst visiting the groovy retro store Planet of the Stuff two weeks back.

I remember this show well as a kid, mostly because to me it seemed like an animated knock off version of my beloved Land of the Lost.

However I was surprised that the two shows came out at the same time, Lost was the clear winner as Valley never had another season.

Let's take a look at this after the jump...

Colouring Book Theatre: Bugs Bunny meets the Superheroes

Bugs Bunny Meets the Superheroes Souvenir Book

This is one of the happier finds I've had this year, not only do I collect memorabilia from this mid 1970s stage show but it's a coloring book to boot.

If that wasn't enough, this item teaches me a little bit about the show itself which is good because I wasn't fortunate enough to attend as child.

This book gives details into what kind of a show it was, I count 16 songs including a solo by the Penguin. Also, it lists Mel Blanc as the provider of the voices, so I imagine all the Looney Toon characters had their voices on a track.

Let's take a look at the plot of this show after the jump...

Colouring Book Theatre: Space:1999

Space: 1999 cut and colour book Saalfield 1975

I can't believe that I've never done a Space:1999 colouring book theater before now.

My nostalgia for this series in the mid eighties is the thing that lead me into toy collecting in the first place, so you can say that the foundation of the site is Moonbase Alpha, actually don't say that, it sounds weird.

What I find humorous about 1999 is that you'd never see such a merchandising blitz for a science fiction show these days (Doctor Who excepted).

This book is by Saalfield and may be the only colouring book in the history of time  that has Christopher Lee on the cover. Obviously the artists at Saalfied had a great deal of promotional material to look at as the aliens on the cover come from three separate episodes.

The moon breaks out of Earth orbit after the jump...

Colouring Book Theatre: Doctor Who (part 3)

I loves me some classic Who merchandise, so I was pretty thrilled to find this colouring book from World.

Unlike the Pertwee one I looked at a while back, this one suffers from that kind of earth tone ruddiness that a lot of Tom Baker merchandise has, it's kind of morose and reminds me of some the annuals I had as a kid.

Like every Who colouring book it lacks any of the trademark aliens, no Daleks, no Cyberman, heck the Tardis only makes a single appearance in this thing! Much of this is based on the Key to Time series as it features Romana 1 and K-9.

It seems that whomever illustrated this was given 4 or 5 stills and really nothing more. It's also obvious that the illustrator wasn't a fan or all that experienced with colouring books. More after the jump:

Colouring Book Theater: Dune (Part 2)

It's been entirely too long since I did an entry for Colouring Book Theater (coincidentally, if anybody wants to send in a Superhero Mall appearance, I'd be your friend) so I thought I'd do some new ones for 2013.

The original Dune entry proved to be one of the most popular things I've done here at PS, so another visit to Arrikas (I had to look that up) is in order.

I am fascinated with Dune merchandise, we didn't get action figures from Last Starfighter but there were little six inch versions of Sting clogging the clearance aisles alongside incredibly phallic sand worms.

Anyway, this book is even more discordant than the last a "coloring and activity" book, it tries to be rather endearing to it's reader, which makes it even more sublime. More after the jump:

Colouring Book Theatre: Shogun Warriors

 ‘Shogun Warriors: Dragun"
I have to admit, I was  excited when I found scans of this book over at (sponsor) Sherryloutoys website.

Mostly because it was free but also because Marvel's "Shogun Warriors" comic usually took my 35 cents  if there wasn't a new issue of "Star Wars" or "Micronauts" on the rack.

I was always a fan of that book even into adulthood, so I'm assuming that Whitman probably aped Marvel and produced a fun book. Sounds like a safe bet right?

Nooooope.

More after the jump.