Joe took toy soldiers to a whole new level by giving them the ability to pose via moveable parts, as well as interchangeable clothing and accessories, the business of creating pop sculpture icons for the mass market was off and running. Superheroes came next, followed by TV show and movie characters, most notably those from Star Wars. Today, action figures exist for sports stars, rock stars, even presidents.With today's blockbuster success of animated films, action figures and collectibles have become a behemoth industry--with a growing need for skilled artists who can bring these characters to life. So how do you get started?The trio of veteran industry insiders who authored this book take you on an incredibly thorough journey that begins with drawing conceptual drafts and continues through rough sculpting and honing the final product. Along the way, you'll learn how to research your character, shape casts from a variety of materials including wax and resin, make accessories, articulate characters so that they are poseable, paint them, and ultimately convince an art director to buy and manufacture them. Whether you want to make small PVC toys, collectible statues, or larger high-end collectibles, Pop Sculpture offers step-by-step demos and words of wisdom from the pros.

    They built a fleet of turbine cars--automobiles with jet engines--and loaned them out to members of the public. The fleet logged over a million miles; the exercise was a raging success.            These turbine engines would run on any flammable liquid--tequila, heating oil, Chanel #5, diesel, alcohol, kerosene. If the cars had been mass produced, we might have cars today that do not require petroleum-derived fuels. The engine was also much simpler than the piston engine--it contained one-fifth the number of moving parts and required much less maintenance. The cars had no radiators or fan belts and never needed oil changes.             Yet Chrysler crushed and burned most of the cars two years later; the jet car's brief glory was over. Where did it all go wrong? Controversy still follows the program, and questions about how and why it was killed have never been satisfactorily answered.            Steve Lehto has interviewed all the surviving members of the turbine car program--from the metallurgist who created the exotic metals for the interior of the engine to the test driver who drove it at Chrysler’s proving grounds for days on end. Lehto takes these first-hand accounts and weaves them into a great story about the coolest car Detroit ever produced.

    The story chronicles with unblinking objectivity the harrowing experiences of Jenny, reared in a satanic cult, in a life so untenable as to fracture the self. In the healing process, these experiences, made of nightmare stuff, are assimilated, with the help of therapists with little to guide their committed and necessarily innovative treatment. The horrifying revelations of Jennys healing journey will shock, inspire, and give caution to us all.

    This collection of too-weird-not-to-be-true stories gives the freakish details behind odd curiosities, from unusual drug side effects to the Alien Hand Syndrome--a disorder wherein a person's hand develops a will of its own.

    Preston Wildey-King, 14, lives in Malibu with his widowed mother and sister. He is literally addicted to Pepsi, to the point that all his thoughts and fantasies are focused on it. When he's not drinking it he's dreaming about it, even creating art and poetry based on it. It amounts to his religion (Preston could have written "Breathtaking Design Strategy", the 2009 corporate document elevating Pepsi and its logo to metaphysical glory). He is deeply in love with Peggy, but she dumps him after an argument over his Pepsi habit. His friend Ryan is bisexual and desires him. His math tutor seduces him, and when he's sent to juvie after robbing a convenience store (mesmerized by a crate of Pepsi, of course, he sits down and drinks some instead of running) he's molested by a guard. Preston's choices and misfortunes are chronicled with that distinctive Gibbons flair, full of elegant metaphors, quirky slang and over- and undercurrents of emotion that take on a life of their own. Good luck finding it. Only five libraries are known to have it, but apparently bootleg copies exist.

    In 1985 Andrew Collins and a psychic colleague uncovered an inscribed spearhead, buried as part of an occult ritual. Claiming to have forged a telepathic link with its maker - a lone figure practising a dangerous form of black magic - the pair were directed to other desecrated holy places, unaware that their adversary was now hunting them, resulting in a confrontation leading to what have been described as disturbing displays of psychic powers. Then, in the early hours of 16th October 1987, as southern England was being hit by its first hurricane for more than two-and-a-half centuries, individuals across the country are said to have reported the same nightmare, revealing the hidden secrets of the hurricane and the power of "the black alchemist".

    But in the course of his astonishing, grueling investigation of life at MSU--and of a young man's tragic alienation from society--he came to understand that there could be no single explanation for the disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III.

    Nothing has been added in the interests of sensationalism. What happened in the small town of Watseka, Illinois, between the years 1865 and 1878 may strain credibility, as well as shock. But it did happen...Mary Roth, a gentle, unassuming 19 year old girl, died suddenly on the night of July 5th, 1865, in the town of Watseka, Illinois. Her death was strange, but her life had been stranger. For several years she had been subject to sudden, unaccountable "fits" - sometimes horrifically violent, sometimes so chilling in their effects her parents thought her insane: she would speak in German, or in a man's bass voice, as if possessed... But death brought to an end her sad and disturbing case...Thirteen years later, in 1878, Mary Roth reappeared - in the living body of Lurancy Vennum...

    This book may well be the Bible of Yé-Yé .”—Boyd Rice

    But it’s not because he misses Sam’s prize-winning steak pies… A dangerous man has arrived in Glasgow. He’s no small-town crook, and he’s leaving a trail of disturbing clues across the city, starting with the missing cousin of Queste’s new lover. Amidst a twisted game of cat and mouse, suspicious coppers and a seemingly random burglary at the judge’s house, Queste has to keep his wits about him. Or he might just find himself on the butcher’s block.

    He also has half a leg thanks to an IED cutting his career short at twenty-four, and he works as a security guard in a high security government building. They’re doing some cutting-edge research and testing on weapons technology and other scientific breakthroughs.Not that it mattered to him, he was no scientist. At least, it didn’t matter until they ripped open a hole in time and space, and it sent him hurtling toward an alternate world. One of magic and swords, but a magic based in science. One of the five universal forces as opposed to the four we currently know about.It’s going to be a crazy ride, in a very strange land and dynastic empire with a very different culture, and he’ll have to do his best merely to survive.Warning: This is a full-sized erotic epic fantasy novel that contains a small number of explicit sex scenes. It also has a mixed harem and polyamory theme, if that isn’t for you than don’t buy this book. This book is told in the first person from William’s point of view, and is the first book of a three novel series.

    Quake, now in development as a film by Repo Man director Alex Cox, is a deadpan, nihilistic look at how fear unravels people?s emotions, how terror can liberate, and how people manage to survive?even panhandler drifters, Hollywood Cretins, and hippies. A true underground classic.

    Says author Daniel Pinkwater of this novel of sociological import: "I honestly don't remember writing this. Are you sure there hasn't been some mistake?"

    

    He strikes in broad daylight, yet no one ever sees him.His target?Garden gnomes ...