Lamar Lattrell

While making the Revenge of the Nerds set I had two cards in mind for the bonus card.  I ultimately chose to go with the Lewis Star Wars card as the bonus card as I thought this Lamar Lattrell 1991 ProSet Yo! MTV Raps style card could work better as a stand alone card.

The Musical Show and Skit Competition was one of the highlights of Revenge of the Nerds.  Lamar killed it.  Now that scene has its own custom card!

"Clap your hands everybody, and everybody clap your hands..."

Revenge Of The Nerds

Revenge of the Nerds is a movie that a lot of us loved, but maybe hasn't aged so well.  There's the cultural stereotypes, the "toxic masculinity" from the bullying Alpha Betas and that problematic err-ummm love scene? between Betty and Lewis on the moonwalk.  But, my '80s kid eyes prefer not to view it as the un-P.C. cluster-bleep it would be by todays standards, but as the underdog sex-comedy it was before our childhood's became so cancellable.  

This is a set I've had the back burner for a long time now.  If you're new to the site I started making custom cards in hopes of sending them off in the mail for autographs 6 or so years ago.  I had made 5 or 6 cards from this movie with no intention of making a mini-set out of it.  Those were just the cards I thought I might stand a halfway decent chance of getting autographs on.  There's a lot of cards from my earlier days that I'd like to expand to a set.  Picture and industrial sized stove with back burners as far as the eye can see, something like that.

I finally decided to buckle down and put this baby to bed.  The cards I had made previously were tightened up since I've got new operating standards that I didn't have then.  I just needed to fill in the blanks character-wise and then design a card back to what ended up being a 14 card mini-set.

For the Lamda's (and one Omega Mu) I used a card front inspired by the  1984 Topps baseball design, a personal favorite of mine.  For the Beta/Pi faction I went with a design inspired by the 1984 Topps football design, which to me just makes perfect sense as the Betas were the football jocks at Adams College.

The cards all got the same card back design to give the set more continuity since the card fronts varied between the heroes and antagonists.  The back design is derivative mostly to '84 Topps baseball set but with some liberties taken to give them the right amount of nerd flare.  

I had a lot of fun packing the card backs with info.  Each card has a "Transcript" section which basically serves as a listing of some of the character's prominent characteristics. Each character also has a quote attributed to them and their frat/sorority affiliation.  There's a "Nerd Factoid" on each just because I'm into that DYK? kind of shit.  The card back finishes off with quiz question so you can test your RotN fanhood.

A number of the sets I've made recently somewhat storyboard a movie so I like to keep those cards together and not offer them with the PCb. card shop's "You Pick Single" option.  This one (all though I would prefer collector's get the entire 14 card set) because they're all character cards and I get that there's some that just might want certain characters, so I'm leaving it open to the Y.P.S. option.  But, as an incentive, I've created a bonus card *only* available with the purchase of the complete set.  

Not that I wanted to highlight the sorta rapey love scene, but it's just that the card makes tons of sense.  What I mean is Lewis was wearing some sort of Storm Trooper/gorilla/Darth Vader hybrid costume and the 1977 Star Wars set is so iconic, and not to mention how the Star Wars franchise is known for their almost cult-like nerd fanboy following.  It just all comes together too perfectly not to make the card.  And hey, *spoiler alert* Lewis and Betty end up married in the sequels so it's sort of  the beginning of a meant-to-be nearly consensual love story!

2018 Motor City Comic Con Review

My fourth Motor City Comic Con is in the books and I came away with radical autographs of  '80s icons. This is really the genesis of how Phantom Cardboard came to be. I wanted to make cards for things I loved from my childhood that didn't exist and then the ultimate coup would be to have the cards autographed.

One of the first things I saw was a tribute to Margot Kidder who was supposed to be signing there this year but sadly passed away just five days ago. There was a bouquet of flowers and a poster board of sorts that fans were signing.

First up was Larry B. Scott as he was there well before all other signers. Of course there's Revenge of the Nerds and The Karate Kid, but I totally forgot he was in That Was Then... This Is Now and SpaceCamp, a couple other '80s movies I really like.

Earlier before going to Comic Con I posted a picture on Instagram of one of my newest cards, the Cobra Kai "Tournament Future Stars" card done in the style of the 1984 Topps baseball card set. This card came about because I wanted to add cards for Cobra Kai members Bobby, Tommy, Jimmy, and Jerry to the Dutch, Johnny and Kreese cards I already made, but I couldn't seem to find any decent quality screen captures to use. What I decided to do was create a "Future Stars" card with the images I could find. Since the images only needed to be small head shots they didn't need to be super high resolution or anything. Topps -to the best of my knowledge- didn't make Future Star cards for their 1984 set, so I had to wing a design.

I saw that Larry B. Scott had an Instagram account and had posted about being at the Motor City Comic Con today so I tagged him on my card's post which he in turn liked. I was hoping when I went to have him sign it he would recognize it from that post and he did, which was super gratifying.

For Larry I had the Cobra Kai card as well as and another card inspired by the same 1984 Topps baseball set, a Lamar Latrelle Tri-Lamb card.

Larry was super cool and interacted great with each fan. He took care to find out how I wanted my cards signed which is always appreciated. He signed the Cobra Kai card small for me knowing I hoped to add three other signatures to it in the future.

He seemed to really like my cards. The first thing he said was that he had never seen these before which was a statement I got from all the signers really. That makes me feel good that I'm contributing something unique for '80s nostalgia fans like myself. 

The second signer I visited was Donald Gibb. If I heard correctly, the two people ahead of me were greeted with a "what up dawg?" from Mr. Gibb. If that's the case, it's one of my favorite things from the day. 

For him I had cards from Revenge of the Nerds and Bloodsport done in Topps inspired card designs from the respective years of the two movies releases. Donald told me he'd seen things like fan made jerseys and helmets but never trading cards.

Here's where it gets kind of funny. Mr Gibb asked if I'd like to take a picture with him and I told him thanks but no because having my picture taken really isn't my thing. I'm one of those who rarely likes how he looks in pictures. Anyways, he replies "I don't blame ya". As I'm walking away I'm thinking to myself that he just went full Ogre on me because I'm this big nerd! I was kind of crushed and honored at the same time to have just been insulted by Ogre. But, after thinking about it I'm pretty sure he just meant he wasn't big on picture taking either.  ... I hope.

Next was another Revenge Of The Nerds Alum, Julia Montgomery. Julia was super sweet. She loved the card. She was even seemed hesitant to sign the front because she said it was "beautiful" and didn't want to write on it. She asked if she could take a picture of it but I did her one better and gave her her own copy which she really seemed to appreciate. Like last year I brought extras of all the cards I had to be signed in the event the signer showed an interest then I could give it to them as a token of appreciation. Also like last year though I didn't outright offer the card if I wasn't 100% sure they would want it in fear of the signer saying "nah". 

Last up was THE man, the one I came to see, William Zabka. This was actually my third time seeing him but I had to get his autograph again with my fanhood at an all-time high thanks to the masterful job that was done on the YouTube Cobra Kai series. 

I'm not sure what the reason was but Mr. Zabka was delayed getting there. I heard he was expected there around 1:30 but I think he arrived there closer to 3 and I was there near the front of the line that had formed to wait for him. Despite the delay he was greeted to a heroes welcome upon arriving at his booth. Like before he was great with his fans, high-fiving and proclaiming "Cobra Kai is back!". Before he got to signing he took out his phone and took a video of us the fans doing some Cobra Kai chants. Hokey, but fucking awesome.

He complimented me on my cards saying I did a nice job on them and I told him how much I enjoyed the Cobra Kai series. I wanted to chat him up more but he had a decent sized line that had quickly formed so I just thanked him, shook his hand and shuffled off with my new treasures.

There's two other cards I brought to have signed. A Willow Madmartigan card for Val Kilmer and a Michael from Lost Boys card for Jason Patric to ink. I guess I didn't bother to read that they would be there Saturday and Sunday only. Although it would be epic to get these two cards signed, I'm not planning on going back. I like going on Friday. For one it's less crowded, and two the tickets are a fraction of what they are on the weekend. Maybe another time.