Tales to Astonish!

Over the past year, a bunch of my blog pals have done virtually in an instant what would have taken some months and a few arbitrary court appearances in real life: they changed their names.

Their blog names, to be specific. Danny over at “Jew Eat Yet?” used to be known as Danny over at “Andy Hardy Writes a Blog,” and Sam over at “Sam-A-Rama” used to be known as the proprietor of “The Real Sam Johnson Show.” There are a few others, too, including Vince’s blog “Ramblings and Musings” which has at some point been switcherooed to “Rocker Guy Ramblings,” and even though Julie’s “Rabid Rabbits and Psycho Squirrels” is still technically titled that, she moved to her new internet home at “EvilJulie.com” so I think that counts. Some of the above-mentioned bloggers even had exciting and thrilling “Name My New Blog” contests, which were entertaining ways to break in my thesaurus!

Now, this got me thinking. I’m not planning on switching “Tales to Astonish!” to something that doesn’t include the words “Tales,” “to,” or “Astonish!” (in that order), but the ever-ominous presence of Marvel Comics is always casting a slight shadow on this here domain. In case you’re not a comics buff, here’s why:

You got it: I’m reasonably terrified that Marvel will send Giant-Man after me. Or the Hulk, but I think that I can probably outsmart him, if his sonic-smasher foot-stomps don’t do me in first. I’d just tell the Hulk that there are some free Hostess-brand Snack Cakes somewhere “over there” (pointing off into the distance opposite of where I planning on running to) and if my 1970s-era comicbook advertisement research doesn’t fail me, he will be totally unable to resist the golden cake and sugary cream of the dessert treats. Giant-Man is a strict vegan, so I’d have to find some kind of really tasty soy product to lure him away with, but those are slightly more rare than fatty snack cakes.

Anyway, in the extremely unlikely event that the rights-holders for the “Tales to Astonish” magazine decide to come down on me for creating a completely unrelated but identically-titled blog, I’d like to have a back-up name handy. With that in mind, I offer you the opportunity to take part in…

THE FIRST ANNUAL ‘NAME THIS BLOG’ NON-CONTEST!

It’s a non-contest (“nontest”?) because I’m not actually changing the name of this blog, and also because there’s absolutely no prize, other than the joy of looking up synonyms for “astonish.” But don’t discount that, ’cause that’s pretty fun.

How about “Thrilling Tales!” “10-Cent Adventure!” I could go on for days!

“The Retropolitan’s Hall of Mystery!” I like that one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 10:23 am and is filed under Comics!, Pulp!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.