Retiro Park in April

wh- what is that.... THAT ABOMINATION?

Getting your parents to buy you 'Look and Learn' was easy; wheedling cash out of them for the horror comic named 'Scream' was another matter altogether. 'Edited' by a sinister, cloaked figure named Ghastly McNasty, Scream only ran for 15 issues (from March to June 1984), but it had unusually beautiful artwork and the occasional very atmospheric storyline such as The Drowning Pond, one of many favourites from the series known as "The Library of Death". And not to forget the Dracula Files, wherein the evil Count is hunted by his obsessed, grimly indefatigable fellow-countryman, Colonel Stakis, 'a former secret policeman who had defected to the West in order to continue his hunt for the Vampire'. Sounds like a man with a bit of a past I'd say.

the maiden who fell in love with the sun / the rocks of doom

Ok, this is what happens when you never leave the house, no one tells you anything. First I discover, Look and Learn have a website, with an amazing picture library, searchable by keyword, which stretches right back to 1961. Secondly, I discover the magazine was re-launched in January 2007. So once more a certain type of kid will enjoy reading about Apollo and Flor in a deserted classroom, while all the others are at rugby practice mashing each others faces into the mud. p.s. good old Hylas, he had the right idea.

They don't make them like this anymore

Today I picked up this October 1973 issue of 'Look and Learn' at the Bourne Mill antiques and bric-a-brac market near Farnham. As well as "another in our series about strange disappearances"; in this case the 9th Legion's absence from the historical record once they wandered past Hadrian's Wall, we have articles about 'the secret signs of the Romanies', cartoon versions of Spartacus and the Trials of Sir Isumbras, a cheery, upbeat guide to the Isle of Man, and the derring-do of "Eagles over the Western Front", wherein a foolish young aviator challenges Baron Manfred von Richtofen himself to an aerial duel. I don't remember reading 'Look and Learn' when i was a kid but it is very charming, and I wonder if there's anything similar today.

bit in Ovid about Julius Caesar's murder

"Men say that the crime was foreshadowed by clashing arms in the black clouds;
trumpets and horns were awesomely blaring and braying in heaven.
The sun's face also was gloomy and steeped the uneasy earth
in a ghostly pallor, shooting stars were constantly streaking
across the sky, and drops of blood were discharged from the rainclouds.
The face of the morning star was dimmed and bespeckled with dirty
rust-coloured spots; blood spattered the chariot bearing the moon.
All over the city the Stygian owl was hooting its sinister
omens, ivory statues wept, and voices chanting
dirges of doom, so they say, could be heard in the sacred groves.
The night was disturbed by the howling of dogs; the streets were haunted
by roaming ghosts of the dead; and the city was shaken by tremors.
But warnings from heaven were powerless to halt the plot or forestall
what fate had decreed."

-Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 15 (782-798)

Dionysus turning pirates into dolphins (copied from Exekias)