Super Mates with Brian Heiler on Coloring books!

[Earth 2 Chris]

Our own chief Brian (Palitoy) Heiler stops by for a lively chat about a subject we both love...COLORING BOOKS! We discuss the best and worst he's seen in Plaid Stallions' "Coloring Book Theatre" and go through my childhood stack of super hero coloring books as well.

http://supermatescomic.blogspot.com/

Chris

[Brown Bear]

That picture has my three favourite colouring books in it!!
I gotta check this out, sounds fun.

[Earth 2 Chris]

If you don't mind me asking, which were your three favorites?

Chris

[palitoy]

Hey, I'm in this!

Super fun chatting with you and Cindy, can't wait for round two!

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Yeah, we had a blast! We're stoked for another round as well!

Chris

[Brown Bear]

Super friends, spidey bs spidey and Star Trek are my three fav's!!
And that cap America was my very 1st colouring book I ever owned. Sweet pic

[Hedji]

Holy God, out of the seven coloring books in that photo, I had all but 2 of them growing up. I'll be listening.

[HardyGirl]

At the beginning you guys were talking about Power Records w/o books and how kids today don't get "Theatre of the mind". I wanted to share this story w/ you. When I was working in after school child care, I brought in my "Famous Ghost Stories" (Wade Denning) record. The activity I planned was to play a couple of stories from the record, and then have them draw what they heard from one of the stories. My first attempt was unsuccessful. When I played "The Headless Horseman", the kids claimed that "they couldn't hear" and they "couldn't understand what the man was saying". I explained to them that they're used to being very visual. They watch TV and movies and play video games so they're used to understanding things they can see. This was an exercise in listening. So I told them to take some deep breaths, close their eyes and relax and really focus on listening. My second attempt was better. I played both "The Headless Horseman" and "The Ghost Ship", and got some really fantastic drawings, (even from the younger kids). Just thought you'd like to know about that.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^That's very interesting Sharry. Nice to know you got through to them. As I said, since my kids are willing to watch old B&W TV and movies, I ain't gonna complain about losing them on Power Records.

Super friends, spidey bs spidey and Star Trek are my three fav's!!
And that cap America was my very 1st colouring book I ever owned. Sweet pic

Nice, Brown Bear. And thanks. Those are my actual childhood coloring books. I'm pretty sure I had more than one copies of some of those, but these survived. Most have coloring from both me (horrible) and my older sister (pretty darn good!).

Holy God, out of the seven coloring books in that photo, I had all but 2 of them growing up. I'll be listening.

Brian suggested the coloring book idea, and I thought it was a great one. We all had these things, and there were honestly a finite amount of them based on the properties we liked, so there's a lot of commonality there.

Chris

[HardyGirl]

I didn't make it to the end (but almost). Did you ever get to the non-superhero/ Star Trek coloring books, (like the kind I used to submit.)? I haven't submitted any lately 'cos my scanner is acting weird.

[Earth 2 Chris]

We covered the non-super hero ones from Plaid Stallions early, but most of my surviving childhood coloring books are super hero ones, so beyond a bit of Star Trek part, the later half was all super-talk.

Chris

[ShadowAvenger]

Wow, I had and still have the Captain America, Super Friends and Batman coloring books as seen in the picture. The Superman one looks familiar but the title does not. I would have loved to had the rest too especially the Star Trek one. For some reason, I don't remember any of the local stores ever stocking that one.

I still buy coloring books today when I can but the modern ones are now called activity books since they have puzzles, mazes, and even stickers in them. The local Dollar General still stock superhero activity books like Batman, Captain America and Superman. Sometimes the local thrift stores will have the activity books and the occasional coloring book.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Most of my 80s "coloring books" we mentioned are actually coloring/activity books, including all the Garcia-Lopez drawn ones, and the Supergirl movie one. It would seem that shift happened in the 80s. A pure coloring book since is pretty rare.

I can't remember when I got that Star Trek coloring book. I didn't get into the show until the early 80s, so I'm guessing it had to be around 81 or 82, which is really late for TOS merchandise at that point.

Chris

[nvmbrsdoom5]

Eager to hear this, I'm a big fan of coloring books, and that Super Friends one was probably my FAVORITE coloring book of my childhood. Nice to see it there!

[johnnystorm]

I really have to track down that Captain America, I used to have a copy when I was a kid.
I need to submit some of my coloring books, is there a preferred format and who gets it? I picked up a few that the members might like, some 60s & 70s TV etc.