FINDING LOST TREASURES

Frank and his Friend - Clarence 'Otis' Dooley - meet the invisible man

Thinking about these illustrations from Frank and his Friend hiding in the garage for the last 30 years still has us reeling.  How many times did we close the Completely Final and Absolute Anthology of Frank and his Friend and wish that there were more?  Hundreds of times, I’m sure.  And if we’d known that these were waiting for us, what would we have done to find them?  Melvin Goodge, Professor of Speech Bubbles at the Huntley Smoot University of Comic Sciences and Dooley expert, sums it up best: “Thinking about these illustrations in that box all those years, while life was less than extraordinary - at the Dentist’s Office, or in line at the DMV - it just kills me to think of what I could have been doing.”

What do you wish you could find more of?  We polled some of the folks here at Curio & Co.

Margie wishes that there were another season of Lost in a Black Hole! to watch.  “They never got to tie up some of the loose ends.  Would Major Nantarian ever have admitted his love for Meena?  Would they have got married on board the Kornephorus-2?  Would they have ever found their way back home?”

Bert mourns something a little more recent, the demise of a magazine: Hog Oilers Today.  “It was the most informative hog oiler-related journalism around, and included topical articles on current events for collectors that came to rely on the magazine for their primary source of news.  They’ve got a version online, but it’s just not the same.”

Tad (though surprisingly, not ‘almost-twin’ Chad) wishes there were another album from lighthouse-rock legends The Screwpiles.  “Their sound was so close to maturing, they were developing the rich ‘saltiness’ that they were striving for.  I really wonder what they could have produced if Ol’ Willie hadn’t stabbed Lucas with a harpoon.”

Mr. Druthers would love to find something that really did exist, the Lost Lampersham Manuscript.  In October 1783, Hargrave Millifore Lampersham penned what he estimated would be his finest work and went out to the bars to celebrate.  When he came back three days later a little worse for wear, he discovered that his maid, who had been long unpaid, had used the pages for kindling and burned the only copy.  The loss sent Lampersham spiraling into depression and alcoholism, “though Lampersham’s maid always insisted he was half-way there without her help.”

What would you most love to find?