Pop! Goes the Icon

I wandered into a Barnes & Noble last weekend with a friend who was on a Kurt Vonnegut book hunt, and displayed on one of the featured books tables was a bold, brightly colored book that caught my eye: The Jim Morrison Scrapbook. As an avid Doors fan and recovering Morrison wannabe, I had to check it out. I have at least five or six books on the band and Morrison, not including his own poetry books, as well as every album and a few videos.

This had to be the coolest friggin’ thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a book about the life and times of the troubled (and long-deceased) Doors lead singer, sure, but every few pages, there is a portfolio-style flap holding some sort of reproduced memorabilia from Morrison’s life and career. The book features all sorts of cool repros perfect for this format: hand-written lyrics, concert programs, letters, drawings and even Morrison’s death certificate. As well, there is an hour-long CD featuring interviews, poetry and more.

It’s been a long time since I went fanboy with anything Doors-related, but this would be worth it. Plus, you can get it for about $26 on Amazon.com. A damn good deal, if you ask me. It takes the concept of Kurt Cobain’s journals that were released in a collected format a few years back and expands on it exponentially.

Then I was watching “The Stack” on YouTube (produced by Pulp Secret), and the three alpha-geeks were discussing holiday gifts for the comic geek, and they mentioned a similarly cool item, The Marvel Vault. It’s premise is the same as the Morrison book: a retrospective of the Marvel era of comic books, featuring all sorts of replicas of nifty items from the company’s history, such as original art, stamps, buttons, fan club swag, and even The Marvel No-Prize Book, an early-’80s bloopers comic I actually own in original form.

Now, admittedly, reproducing things such as buttons on flimsy paper is not as cool as reproducing pages from Jim Morrison’s notebook. But for a true Marvel Comics fan, this seems like a no-brainer “must-have” item. Even within the restrained realm of my own geekery, I’d put that puppy on my coffee table.