In honor of Halloween here’s a terrifying ghost named Casper. This is issue #96 of Casper’s Ghostland (and all his friends) from 1977. Harvey Comics is sort of the Hanna-Barbera of comic books, as in cheap and not very good. Casper rides a “sky board” on the cover, floating above an unnamed child on a skateboard in case you don’t get the joke. It’s good thing the motion lines and puffs are coming from his leg and not his rear end. Can ghosts fart?

I’ve added 47 ads from the May, 1979 issue of Skateboarder magazine to the Vintage Skatemag Advert gallery, bringing the total number of ads in the gallery to 1093! Some highlights include Wally Innouye for Caster, a skateboard tourism service called Skatour, a Tracker ad with Doug Schneider with some art direction that looks like it might have influenced Thrasher before it came out, Variflex trucks that never stood a chance, and brand new (at the time) Kryptonics vertical beam wood decks.

Along with social media posts, Surfer Today has confirmed that Patti McGee passed away on Oct 15th at the age of 79 due to complications from a recent stroke. Patti was the world’s first female professional skateboarder, and the first female to appear on the cover of a skateboarding magazine. Many people remember her iconic cover of Life Magazine as well, likely the first appearance of a skateboarder on the cover of a non-skateboarding magazine. Patti appeared on the TV game show What’s My Line? in 1965 as well as other TV programs with Mike Douglas and  The Johnny Carson Show, as well as a Bell Telephone commercial. She was the first female inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. Juice Magazine has an interview with Patti conducted in 2017 by Steve Olson. By all accounts she was a lovely and inspiring person to all who knew her. A true legend. Photo: Patti McGee

Up to this point I’ve avoided posting any AI generated skateboarding content. While researching some pics a reader sent in (anyone ever hear of a Jordy brand skateboard?) my image search came up with some bizarre AI generated skateboards on the stock art site Freepik that were too good/bad to ignore. It looks like someone dumped a bunch of skateboard images that were generated by AI, which is fine and dandy for a generic image, but they must not have proofed these. It turns out the only thing AI is worse at generating than human hands is skateboard trucks, and the spelling of the word “skateboard.”

Day 7 (!) of 7 Days of Jughead! I made it! This is volume 2, issue #34 of Jughead published in June of 1992. It has a couple of stories with skateboarding, I Was a Teenage Jughead and Lessons in Skateboarding. Even Jughead himself asks, is this a joke?

It’s day 4 of 7 days of Jughead, and Jughead v2 #29 from 1992 is a big one. The thrust of the main story is the adage don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Major Spoiler Alert: Grandma Jones is friends with some skate punks who buy groceries for her and in return she lets them have band practice in her garage. Meanwhile Jughead is completely out of the loop. Spend some time with your Grandma Jughead, you never know how those punks will take advantage of her kindness… but it turns out the punks are tired of being misunderstood. They give (!) Jughead an extra skateboard, and Grandma Jones’ guitar teacher (wild!) encourages Jughead to be his own person, so Jughead reinvents himself as a skate punk! It turns out this short-lived character transformation was not well received by the Archie community… Yes, there is an Archie community. In any case, there’s a lot to unpack in my favorite episode of Freaks and Geeks… errr… uhm, Jughead.

It’s day 3 of 7 days of Jughead! This is Jughead Volume 2 #28 from December of 1991. The first thing you might notice is the corner box illustration which hints at radicalness as well as an announcement declaring the inside pages are made from recycled pages, which is a change from the recycled stories usually featured in Archie titles. This is actually kind of a crazy cover for this imprint, but it was the 90’s and you have to assume they were trying to stay hip.

You know my love for the Surf Punks. Futurismo is adding a rerelease of Locals Only to compliment the My Beach reissue. Unlike the My Beach reissue, Locals Only has two bonus tracks, and I’ve never heard them before. This is exciting to me, and at least one other person I’m sure. Be happy for me. Then take a moment to reflect on the fact that a band like the Surf Punks could not have crawled out of the primordial slime in any other time and place than late 70’s Southern California, and yet you have the import these masterful reissues from the UK.

Day two of 7 Days of Jughead features the story “Skateboard Fever” from issue 272 of Jughead, published in 1978. I don’ know why I didn’t go chronologically and post this one first, but I’m already posting Archie comics, so all taste and logic has gone by the wayside. This story is once again set in the hallways of Riverdale High. Poor Principal Weatherbee, or “the Bee” as Jughead refers to him, spent decades either purposefully or accidentally trying to learn how to skateboard, but he never gets the hang of it. Highlights include Veronica calling the guys “bean bags,” and Betty acting like a Karen – “It’s against the rules to skateboard in school!”

This is the beginning of the sacred holiday here at Skate and Annoy known respectfully as the 7 days of Jughead. We’ll see if I have the intestinal fortitude to actually follow through with it, so here goes. Let’s start with Jughead #13, AKA Volume 2 #13, from 1989. The first series started in 1949, but volume 2 started in 1987. This issue features story called “Roll Model” that takes place in the hallways of Riverdale High, like half of all Archie-realted skateboarding stories. Oh, the antics… The tomfoolery! Shenanigans!