To bring a bit of variety to the blog I wanted to pimp one of THE best comic series ever : SAVAGE DRAGON. But because I haven´t read the latest issues I´m posting a Top Ten of Erik´s headshot splash pages.


Man, Erik Larsen kills it with the ..... what ? Were you expecting something else with this title ? Oh, I see. You thought this would be the blowjob scene between Savage Dragon and Horridus I mentioned in my last post about the series. Okay, but only because you asked so nicely.


Yup, that didn´t work out. Thankfully Horridus later hooked up with Rex Dexter and they are getting it on 24 / 7 or so it seems. Best series EVER !


I don´t know if DRAGON CON has actually anything to do with the comic or if Erik Larsen gets any money from this ( probably not ) but here are some cosplayers with really great looking costumes from this year´s venue. This is what I imagine the daily life of a superhero looks like.



Speaking about Erik Larsen, here´s an interview where he talks about how SAVAGE DRAGON started and the creative process of the book.



Now if you haven´t read any of my previous posts on SAVAGE DRAGON you can either use the " Savage Dragon " tag to find them all or you can check out this video from MEANWHILE to get a little SAVAGE DRAGON 101.



One of the things you hear about Erik Larsen is he has a strange way of holding the pencil when he´s drawing and before you start to wonder ...



I always like to add a cartoon video and SAVAGE DRAGON had a cartoon show in the 90s. There are some videos on YouTube where you can see entire episodes but they are low quality. So I´m posting the intro which is missing from all those episodes and which has a slightly better quality.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

I´m in a dilemma because Bart Sears AND Mark Texiera celebrate their birthday Today. But as I already did a long post on Mark Texiera on his birthday last year , and it gives me a chance to talk about his work on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE ( and Power Girl ) this year it´s Bart Sears turn.


And I had almost forgotten about those birthdays if facebook hadn´t reminded me. I was too busy trying to finish up the material for my cult siren post on Alyssa Milano who celebrates her 42nd birthday on Saturday.

On my old boob blog I had already done a few posts on Alyssa but those were mostly a lot of pics and download links so I want to add something with a bit more substance. And since I could not post them way back this includes some GIFs - at least from the best scenes. Now this time I went on the internet before making my own GIFs - except for a few I already had done - and I found a lot of good ones that I then had to sift through. But as usual there were some from my top moments with Alyssa missing and in the end I had to make a few ones myself again. Right now I have most of the important ones finished and I might have to do a second post because I will not manage to put all the GIFs into one post. Well, I could but then the post will probably take forever to load. I just hope the post turns out like I´m picturing it and all this work will not have been in vain.


This time of the year is kind of crammed with birthdays of importance to this blog and while I can´t probably do posts on all of them I plan on crossing off as many candidates of that growing list as possible.

For a few I have already selected all the material but for others like Mark Texiera I just wanted to pick up where we left off last year. I have to say that while I planned to read more of his recent comic stuff I really have not gotten around to it. And this is one of the reasons why I like to do these anniversary posts. Because with all the things I have constantly on my mind I forget a lot of stuff. Like with Teri Hatcher. Writing about her reminded me what an absolutely brilliant series LOIS & CLARK - THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN was and that it should already be part of my DVD collection. So the next time the series was in the " 3 tv series for 25 EUROS " section I scooped up all four seasons. It also reminded me how fantastic John Byrne´s revamp of Superman was and at the moment I´m trying to complete the MAN OF STEEL trades. For some strange reason DC stopped with volume eight and I´m now onlyl missing volume five. One of these days I will have to get back to that part of the 90s Superman epos so I can finally talk about the totally Airwolf SUPERMAN : EXILED saga. 


Back to Mark Texiera, the comics that are still on my list are two new Punisher mini series, PUNISHER IN SPACE ( which I have heard is not that good or genius depending on who you ask ) and PUNISHER NIGHTMARE, as well as independent comics PSCYTHE ( which I haven´t been able to find anywhere so far ), RED SPIKE from iMAGE comics ( where he only does part of the artwork ) and A HERO`S DEATH with the guys from IDW. 


So even if I had the time to do another post on Mark Texiera Today it would not make much sense because I don´t have much to add to last year´s post. Which ends my as usual long winded intro and brings us to the really important part about Bart Sears. It all started with Power Girl. 


As all things do. Really, in one way or another every single thing that happens in this universe can be tracked back to Power Girl in the end.

All joking aside, in this case it´s true and I guess I have already told the story of how when I was transferred from Bruchsaal to Munich during my military service it was just before Christmas - I guess around the same time as now - when I found my way to Munich city and the first REAL comic shop, JÜRGENS COMIC SHOP, and bought a whole bag of original american comics, many of which I had never heard of and others which I knew but were restarted after CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Now I would like to say that among those was issue one of JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE and that I got in on the ground floor but the truth is that the first issue I bought from this series was issue 4, where the team goes to Bialya.


So when I filled my bag with comics I tried everything that looked halfway interesting and I don´t know if I had seen Bart Sears´ art before but his style got me hooked from the first page. And I won´t lie, his depiction of females and Power Girl in particular made a huge impression on me. As you always remember your first time in the story the Queen Bee has taken over the team of the Global Guardians - DC´s precursors to the Justice League Europe - and the Justice Leaguers went there to investigate.


They arrived at the hotel with the usual hijinks and banter ( to which I wasn´t accustomed to since this was my first issue ) like Flash offering to help Power Girl to get into her costume which was something I hadn´t seen in a comic book before. Of course I was familiar with the Justice League from the stories I read in the Ehapa GERECHTIGKEITSLIGA comics but the heroes in those stories were not as relatable and I don´t think I had read any stories with Wally West as the new Flash at that time.  I already posted the page but I couldn´t find it in better quality, sorry. 


Well, I was young, in my sexual prime and had a lot of spare time in the barracks ( we were three in one room but the others went home after duty so I had the black and white television set with a lot of TUTTI FRUTTI and PLAYBOY LATE NIGHT all to myself which didn´t exactly help my situation ) so I re - read the issue a few times imagining what could have happened if Animal Man would have gotten Power Girl under his control with pheromones. Ah, the things I would have done to her.


But enough about my Power Girl fetish. While Bart Sears had some other work at DC - like the wrap up issue for the INVASION crossover - this was really the first time I saw his work and Bart used his chance at a big title to not only draw a historic version of Power Girl ( let´s face it, this is the one most people know and all other versions are compared to ) but to flex his muscles and show the reading audience what he was capable of.


While the regular JUSTICE LEAGUE title was more widely known as the " Bwah Ha Ha " League ( which is not to say that they didn´t have their serious scraps ) JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE did have some depressing storylines that dealt with issues like zombie plagues, would be world conquerors, atomic arms races and post apocalyptic parallel worlds.


Speaking about would be world conquerors, one of the Justice League´s classic villains appears in a 3 part saga. I don´t know what the guy was smoking who came up with Starro but you got to love the giant starfish.


Of course this was a walk in the park compared to the earlier five part story The Extremist Factor where they are totally out matched by a quintet from a parallel earth which are analogues to Marvel villains.


From left to right we have Lord Havok ( Doctor Doom ), levitating in the foreground Dreamslayer ( Dormammu ), Doctor Diehard ( Magneto ), Tracer ( Sabretooth ) and last but not least Gorgon ( Doctor Octopus ).  


This was Gerard Jones first story on the title and he really put out all the stops and showed what would happen in the real world ( well, as real as a world populated by DC heroes can be in the end ) if villains like Doctor Octopus and Magneto took control over the atomic arsenal of the world.


Now I could go on about all the wonderful stories on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE but since this post is about Bart Sears and only in part about the JLE the last story I wanted to mentioned is the one with Metamorpho´s kid where Metamorpho goes up against Guy Gardner and the Metal Men.


This post has already become much longer than anticipated so I´m afraid we have to continue with this subject in my next post where I can talk more about all the other books Bart Sears did. I just hope I can finish this post before I have to start on the Alyssa Milano celebrity birthday post.


Since I already mentioned Starro I wanted to add a little DEJA VUE section to the post as I know that most readers like these and I haven´t done one since my celebrity birthday post about Demi Moore . I wanted this to be more than just a collection of Starro covers so I went with the " face hugger " motif which starts with JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 190.


The story was included in SUPERMAN präsentiert GERECHTIGKEITSLIGA ( Die großen Superhelden in einem Team ! ) Album 17 from Ehapa comics where most of the cover was blocked out by banners and logos. Wonder Woman´s chin is cut off and you can´t even see what shape Starro has.


This cover was also adapted for issue 5 of JUSTICE LEAGUE ADVENTURES, the tie in series to the successful tv series which was actually quite good ( often better than the actual comic ) and gets highest recommendations.


Bart Sears also did some homage covers for the Starro three parter : issue 26 is another version of the cover for JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE 1


which - of course - was an homage to the cover of JUSTICE LEAGUE 1.


Issue 27 is a riff on what I call the " Face Off " cover. I know there is probably one cover on which all others are based but there are just so many variations of teams going against each other - with one team on this side and the other team on that side - that I´m not even trying to pinpoint the exact point of origin and just throw them into one big pile. 


And I don´t know if issue 28 was based on any previously existent cover so for now I´m gonna title it " a trip to the fish market gone wrong ".


Usually I do the link section after finishing the post but Today I have to include them before finishing the main part because they keep lining up.

When you´re looking for one page from JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE you´re bound to find a lot of posts about the best Justice League EVER and COMIC BOOK RESOURCE`s section Comics Should Be Good has various entries on the best JLE stories like The Justice League Europe Takes French Lessons , The Extremist Factor ( in which Power Girl debuts her white and yellow sprayed on costume ) or the Fight Against Starro story. They also list Every Time A Character Actually " Bwah Ha Ha " ed and have a post on the abandoned storyline of Wonder Woman Joining The JLE .


It is said that new comic readers come in every day and while it´s nothing to be ashamed of those readers might want to brush up on their DC 101 at NOTHING BUT COMICS who have a few posts on post Crisis series like the Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis JUSTICE LEAGUE , Mike W. Barr´s DETECTIVE COMICS , Mike Grell´s GREEN ARROW or Mark Waid´s The Return of Barry Allen ( which I still hope in a future FLASH FRIDAY post ) . And if you are a fan of the ARROW and FLASH tv show the last two are of special interest because they highlight the best periods from the comics.

Another website I came across - and which is one of the reasons why Today´s unplanned post is shorter than it deserves - is NOSTALGIC INVESTMENTS and while the reguar reader of this blog has probably not the necessary moolah to buy any of the original art pages on this site you can at least enjoy fine art pieces from such masters as Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, John Buscema, Curt Swan, Neal Adams, Jim Aparo, George Perez, both John Romitas, Mike Zeck, Barry Windsor Smith, Gene Colan, Norm Breyfogle, John Byrne, Bob Layton, Arthur Adams, Jim Starlin, Mike Grell, Jim Lee or Dave Cockrum. They even have some MASTER OF KUNG FU originals and a WOLVERINE page by Mark Texiera.


I usually end the video section with a cartoon but his time I want to start with this video about TOP 5 FORGOTTEN BUT AWESOME CARTOONS just because it includes the COPS cartoon which had a comic adaption at DC which was one of the first jobs Bart Sears did for a major company.


And I have to say I don´t agree with the selection. SILVERHAWKS had a better theme song than it was as a series, MASK is neither forgotten nor that awesome, DINOSAUCERS is probably not forgotten without a good reason ( unless the series is far better than the intro ) and COPS was questionable at best. The only cartoon I would put on my top five is BIONIC SIX which was really one of the best ever. I guess my list of the best 80s cartoon would also include GALAXY RANGERS, SABER RIDERS, DRAGONBALL and since it can´t be CAPTAIN FUTURE ( the series is from the 70s ) the last one would be THUNDERCATS or something funny like COUNT DUCKULA. So what do you think ? What would be your picks ?



Well, Wonder Woman never really made it into the JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE but at least she made it into this post. Here´s the only real Hollywood Wonder Woman Lynda Carter on Intimate Portrait.



Justice League Europe would be only half as entertaining without the constant banter between Flash and Power Girl so because there are more Flash videos than I can post in my FLASH FRIDAY posts ( to which I hope to return in the not too distant future ) here are 10 TOP FLASH FACTS.



Speaking about Power Girl, I told you I would post more Screen Team videos so here is one with the lovely Angie Griffin cosplaying as the .... well, does Power Girl have a moniker like the Maid of Mighty Mammaries, the Queen of Cleavage or the Princess of Power in the NEW 52 universe ?


It also has a tutorial on how to make comic book art which reminds me of ZUGESCHAUT UND MITGEBAUT, a show Terry Hooper might remember.



We end the post with another music video from America´s Got Talent ( soon I´ll have to add another label for these shows ) this time with a guy.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Because the post about Bart Sears I started Yesterday has become too long I decided to put this stuff in a separate post. You can go to the first post if you want to read about Bart Sears on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE.


I really should be finishing the material for the post on Alyssa Milano, who celebrates her 42nd birthday Tomorrow instead of still writing on what is practically Yesterday´s post. But as usual I did spend most of Yesterday putting the original art pages I found while making the post into folders and looking for the Bart Sears art I had scattered all around my laptop instead of actually writing the post. It also doesn´t help if you have to go to the bank and write a post without any preparation on the same day.


Especially if - like me - you have to take a bus to get to the bank and no matter when you arrive at the bus stop the bus leaves right under your nose. Anyway, I will probably have to wing it on the Alyssa Milano post or do it at a later time as usual and I also don´t have the time necessary to do a post on Christina Aguilera who celebrates her 35th birthday Today.


So in our last post we covered Bart Sears on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE and here we get to all the other stuff he did in his long and illustrious career.

After his stint on JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE Bart tackled another DC icon in the three issue story Faith in issues 21 to 23 of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT before drawing the bookend issues to the big ECLIPSO crossover of the 1992 annuals and the first issues of the following ongoing series. Some of you may remember that the first issue of the ECLIPSO event had a little violet plastic Eclipso diamond glued to the cover ( which wrinkled it a bit ). Yep, the 90s with the crazy gimmick covers were in full effect.


I read until the issue after Bart Sears had left but the drop in the quality of the art was so dramatic and the story had become convoluted that I left the series. I have to add that most of the ECLIPSO annuals were if not great reads at least entertaining ( I bought them all ) which can´t be said for a lot of crossovers these days which have become formulaic.


Around that time Bart Sears started doing art tutorials in WIZARD which I still read at that time. He did over thirty of them and if you have one of their How To Draw books there is probably some of his stuff in there. He went freelance and did work on Marvel´s SILVER SABLE and MIDNIGHT SONS, Dark Horse´s TITAN and WILL TO POWER and image´s VIOLATOR.

He also began working for VALIANT where he did some issues of TUROK ( which in my opinion was a big waste because there were not enough hot babes for him to draw there ) and X - O MANOWAR which was a better fit.


He returned to X - O MANOWAR as one of the regular pencilers in 1995 for which would become the title´s swan song. I read many VALIANT books but X- O MANOWAR was the best. You just could not beat the concept which was putting Conan, the Barbarian in a piece of space armor more sophisticated than Iron Man´s suit. I mean, X - O Manowar´s armor was doing things Tony Stark had never dreamed of like battle camouflage or morphing and his Iron Man suit looked like cheap trash compared to this.   

At this point his style had become so detailed that it was impossible for him to do a monthly book but the guys at VALIANT had the brilliant idea of alternating issues between him and Andy Smith who had a pretty similar style at that time. So the reader got a art two punch combo and X - O MANOWAR really picked up some speed during the last 24 issues or so.


VALIANT folded, or better was bought by ACCLAIM which turned some books into unsuccessful video games and the comics into bad versions of their former glory before folding. And that was that for a time. Thankfully VALIANT has returned again and so far all of their books I have read are awesome. Bart Sears even returned to the company to do some promo art, covers and issues 18 and 19 of BLOODSHOT AND H.A.R.D.CORPS.


In 1994 Bart set up his own comic company OMINOUS PRESS where he sadly only published three issues of BRUTE & BABE. These issues have some of his best art but because of the fragile market his company went out of business. After the collapse of the first incarnation of VALIANT Bart Sears went to PENTHOUSE COMIX where he did art for YOUNG CAPTAIN ADVENTURE and HERICANE. Since I was buying all of those issues ( come on, comics, superheroes and boobs, this was like the best of two worlds ) I devoured the pages which gave you an idea what a POWER GIRL series could have looked like if those guys at DC had real cojones. The art on these is pretty amazing and he started using the thick outlines here.

He returned to Marvel where he did a very successful BLADE series and a not so good SPIDER - WOMAN series. You would think that a series written by John Byrne and drawn by Bart Sears with more Spider - Women than you can shake a stick at would become a huge success. But it didn´t.  


Marvel was totally schizophrenic because at that time they already HAD a long running comic book with a female version of Spider - Man that was beloved by their readers ( they started three letter campaigns to stop Marvel from cancelling it ! ) but they did their best to kill that book ( like restarting the numbering to prevent that the book got more than 100 issues under its belt ) while at the same time coming up with one failed attempt after another to establish a new and different Spider - Woman.


Coming back to SPIDER - WOMAN this was not a good time for John Byrne aficionados and after the atrocious SPIDER - MAN : YEAR ONE, which was supposed to do for the Spider franchise what Bendis´ ULTIMATE SPIDER - MAN achieved years later, he was just phoning his scripts in. This of course didn´t excite Bart much and the art suffered accordingly. It also didn´t help that the main character changed her outfit like every other issue so besides having the original Spider - Woman Jessica Jones in the book they only lasted 18 issues. And I´m not kidding, if you look at the covers Spider - Woman has a different outfit on almost all of them.


After this unsatisfactory work experience Bart went to CROSSGEN where he did THE PATH ( a samurai story set in feudal Japan - I think - where he continued his heavy lined art ) and THE FIRST a series of two warring clans of beings with godlike powers. The latter one was one of the first ( no pun intended ) comics where I got an inkling hwat it must be like for a non comic reading person to read superheros. Because every person in that comic was wearing a costume but unlike the iconic costumes  we know from Superman, Batman, Spider - Man, Nexus or other costumed crusaders they all looked very similar and it was as hard to keep them apart as to remember to which of the two fractions they belonged to.


I think Andy Smith also did some of the work on THE FIRST. For a while CROSSGEN become one of the top five comic companies with each new slew of books being better and I was reading almost all of their titles. My brother was reading most of the books I didn´t have on my pull list.


Well, CROSSGEN also went belly up when it failed to find new investors ( it is telling how many companies go out of business in one man´s career ) so Bart returned to Marvel where he did the limited series CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON, WEAPON X : DAYS OF FUTURE NOW and SABRETOOTH which I haven´t read so I can´t comment on them. 


What I DID read was the awful WARLORD series he did when he returned to DC much to the dismay of my younger brother who had the misfortune of having to pay for the issues while I only needed to suffer through it.


Man, you just can´t beat the original series. Even original creator Mike Grell failed when he tried to add a new chapter. Anyway, if you don´t believe me just check out DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND where Old Groove has posted the latest installment " Trilogy " from WARLORD 12.


And that´s it. Bart Sears is still working but since I have not read THE SCREAM or THE HELM at Dark Horse or TUROK : DINOSAUR HUNTER and JOHN CARTER, WARLORD OF MARS at Dynamite Entertainment for which he did covers this is where the post ends. And I will definitely be checking out the BLOODSHOT AND THE H.A.R.D.CORPS issues from VALIANT.


As usual there are a lot of websites to thank for and I want to start with the ones that were most instrumental in deciphering Bart Sears´ personal work timeline. I hope I managed to get it right and my readers will correct me on any mistakes. Firstly the guys at GRAND COMICS DATABASE are to thank for all the covers and info on Bart Sears which were invaluable as were his entries at wikipedia and COMICBOOK DB and his biography at TALES FROM A BART SEARS COLLECTOR which seems to be the inofficial Bart Sears homepage. I also have to include the Bart Sears gallery at COMIC ART COMMUNITY which provided more much needed artwork as did A WORLD OF THOUGHTS where you can read the entire issue 1 of NEGATION WAR which you absolutely should do if you haven´t read the series or any CrossGen books. Kudos and many thanks to all of these.

Man, my brain is turning into mush because I blanked on Today´s 40th birthday of fitness model, Sexbombe and WWF ( for me it will be always the real WWF and not this new WWE ) Diva Trish " The Dish " Stratus.


Both her AND Christina Aguilera celebrate their birthdays at the same time ? It must have been the day for hot and busty blonde sexbombs. While Trish Stratus never won any fitness competitions, long before she stepped into the squared circle, a lot of us saw her in MUSCLE & FITNESS.


Trish Stratus ( born Patricia Anne Stratigias on December the 18th 1975 in Richmond Hill, Ontario ) is a former canadian fitness model and semi - retired professional wrestler ( on September 17th, 2006 after winning her 7th Women's Championship ). She´s the first in WWF history to have held the Women's Championship seven times, three more than the four reigns of Lita and the four recognized title reigns of The Fabulous Moolah. She is also one of only four women to have held the Hardcore Championship.


As a fitness model, Stratus has been on the cover of major health and fitness magazines such as MUSCLEMAG, FLARE, and TOTAL WOMEN´S FITNESS. She also released a calendar series called " Dream Team " with fellow model, Stacey Lynn. As a sports entertainer, she was proclaimed the " Diva of the Decade " on the WWF RAW X Anniversary Show . She was voted " WWE Babe of the Year " three times between 2001 and 2003.


For more about Trish Stratus check out The Best Of  Trish Stratus ( with more pictures ) on DIVALICIOUS , if you are really interested go to LETHALWOW where you can find a really long bio and various galleries and if that´s still not enough the only place left is ADAM´S WRESTLING BLOG ( Best in the World ). As for me I´m going to watch some of my favorite Trish Stratus videos ( which are not from the Divas DVDs but I don´t want to go into a long rant right now ) to get my Stratusfaction.
 

It´s been a while since I posted a Yaya Han video and there is one I am saving for Christmas. In the meantime here´s one with Yaya as Chun Li.



Because we also covered Spider - Woman in this post here´s a video about all the going ons behind the scenes concerning the REAL origin of Venom and spider - Man´s black costume. Which ties in to SECRET WARS.



A lot of comic readers have no idea that such a thing as CrossGen Comics ever existed so here´s one of the few videos I found on YouTube on the subject. If you don´t know the comics you definitely have to check them out as almost every title is among the best comics you will ever read.



And speaking about the only videos I could find on YouTube Today´s cartoon clip is one of the few with Julie Bruin from the TINY TOONS. Can anyone recommend some episodes ? Her toons were definitely not tiny.



Coming from one green garbed buxom sexbomb to another I couldn´t end this post without a Christina Aguilera video. It´s the least I can do if I can´t do a post on her. This is her breast appearance on the Ellen show.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Today I´m taking a break from writing about Bart Sears ( two posts should be enough to celebrate his anniversary ) to bring a birthday salute to one of tv´s hottest ladies, Alyssa Milano, who turns 42 Today. Alyssa´s one of the tv cult sexbombs I should have done a post about long ago.


She´s best known as the most charming, sexiest and all around greatest of the Halliwell witches, Phoebe Halliwell on the cult tv show CHARMED.

Before that she starred in the tv hit WHO´S THE BOSS ? where she grew up in front of the national tv audience. I vividly remember SELLING SAM SHORT ( season 8, episode 4 ) in which puberty has already hit certain areas of her body in particular her chest. Alyssa is at that delicate threshold young women reach when their breasts are already fully grown but the rest of the body hasn´t had time to catch up. She is wearing a green top that is straining heavily under her grown up breasts. I found the episode on YouTube but the quality is too bad to make an animated GIF.



Anyway, speaking about animated GIFs I started preparing for this post four or five days ago but because of the improvised Bart Sears posts I haven´t quite finished. Thankfully I found a lot of usable GIFs online but there are still a few I had to make myself. Sadly when I had finally added most of them I had to realize that the strain all the GIFs put on the post prevented it uploading completely so I had to cut the part about ALYSSA MILANO´S BEST SCENES ON CHARMED and put it in a separate post.

But back to Alyssa Milano. During her time on WHO´S THE BOSS ? she produced and starred in her own workout video called TEEN STEAM, which ( despite its quasi - raunchy title ) was an exercise video for kids -- and was absolutely never used as an entertainment piece for guys in their parents' basements. I´m sure nobody used this tape of Alyssa´s tight and fit teenage body stretching, flexing and bending for recreational reasons.



After that Alyssa Milano was trying to get away from her good girl image, slutting it out and getting naked in a few movies like POISON IVY II  where her males co star got to live out every fan´s sexual fantasy.


But my favorite is the vampire movie. I´m saying the vampire movie because here in Germany it´s called EMBRACE OF THE VAMPIRE, KISS OF THE VAMPIRE or PASSION OF THE VAMPIRE depending on which tv station shows it. Alyssa´s body in this one is incredible and she has her breast nude scenes in this one including a lesbian scene with Charlotte Lewis.


In the same year Alyssa starred in an episode of OUTER LIMITS where she didn´t leave much to the imagination thanks to the lower restrictions of the Sci Fi channel. She was well on her way to become a sexsymbol.


After that she went on to star in CHARMED where her 36C 23 36 measurements got the better of spoiled brat Shannon Doherty who left the series to be replaced by Rose Mc Gowan. Anyway, none of the other Halliwell sisters really did much for me where sex appeal is concerned.


Come on, you know Alyssa is the only reason why we guys watch the show.


It´s to see her as a amazon, stripper, genie, harem girl or mermaid.


And that´s not counting all of her appearances where she just squeezed her huge overdeveloped XXL boobs into impossibly tight corsages.


When Rose McGowan joined the cast she and Alyssa entered a weekly competition to see who could wear the skimpiest outfits, wear a bikini more times and generally display their nipples or showcase their boobs.


Since Alyssa knew that her body is the reason why people watch the show, this continued even after she took the reigns as a producer on the show.


Happy male viewers were treated to boobage, sideboobs, cleavage, buttocks and nipples from both women for an impressive eight years.


Now after the fiasko with the CHARMED DVDs around Christmas last year I bought all the remaining seasons in one order when they were available for a much cheaper price. When I started watching the show I expected to have to wait until maybe the third or fourth season to get to the good stuff because I knew some of my favorite scenes ( seen farther above ) are in the fifth season but Alyssa steals the scene from the get go.


After the third season Shannon Doherty leaves the cast ( her character dies in the series ) and Rose McGowan comes in as a long lost half sister.

CONAN`S DAUGHTER : " I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH DOCTOR DOOM ! "

This changed the dynamic of the show considerably because Shannen´s character Prue had been the oldest sister, a role which Holly´s character Piper had to fulfill now. And Alyssa´s character Phoebe, who had always been the plucky and irresponsible youngster of the group became kind of a mentor for Rose´s character Paige trying to get her to avoid all the mistakes she herself made. Like the regeneration on DOCTOR WHO the show gained new life and went on to become a world wide success that is still in reruns which makes it difficult for a new version to compete with.


So while the departure of Shannen Doherty may have been for the best it´s difficult to find out the real reason for this. There are stories that both did it with Julian McMahon who played Cole but most sources say that while Julian WAS with with Shannen Alyssa was dating co star Brian Krause. I tried to unravel this as best as I could but keep in mind that as somebody who was not there when it happened I have no inside intel and have to rely on outside sources. So this is probably not the whole truth.

Somebody on the internet compared CHARMED to CHARLIE´S ANGELS and in that scenario Holly Marie Combs is Jacklyn Smith ( stayed thru the duration of the show ), Lisa Rom is Farrah Fawcett ( left the show and probably regretted it later ), Shannen Doherty is Kate Jackson ( hated the sexy one and got fired by Aaron Spelling. Also, the one nobody wanted to see in a bikini ), Alyssa Milano is Cheryl Ladd ( the sexy one ) and Rose McGowan is Shelley Hack / Tonya Roberts ( the forgetable replacement ).


Now I found the following on a chat so I don´t know how accurate it is. Since I didn´t write it it´s in italic type except for the parts I added. I DID take the liberty to cut parts and shorten or lengthen it for a better fit.   

CHARMED started out as CHARLIE`S ANGELS with witchcraft, and a vehicle for Shannen. Spelling assured Shannen that none of the drama surrounding BEVERLY HILLS90210 would affect the show and her star status. And that the production would make this her vehicle. Spelling was a master at promotion, everyone turned in curious to see a spelling show with Shannen at the helm. Holly was a new actress with small credits, having been a supporting cast member on Picket Fences. Holly was brought in as a friend for Shannen, upon her request. Shannen´s input was asked in the earlier stages of development, including the casting process for her sisters. Then the last minute replacement of Lori Rom ( who quit after shooting the pilot episode ) by Alyssa threw everything off.


Shannen's lead status slowly changed according to the viewers who tuned in to see Alyssa and her big tittes ( not my words ) after a few seasons. 


It was then retooled to give Alyssa the love story and other plots to keep male viewership, and Shannen felt her suggestions and requests for storylines and direction was minimized because Alyssa " popped " and production took advantage of her sex symbol status. Shannen felt her contractual agreements weren't being honored and her courtship between Spelling had waned. She felt the three actresses should work towards a less " soapy " alternative. Earlier episodes show this transition from a crime / supernatural drama into a camp soapfest. Shannen felt that her time on the series was at an end, and requested to be let go from her contract. She did feel the show wasn't as good as it could have been.


Now there are two conflicting stories. In one version Shannen went to Spelling and said that he either fired Alyssa or she would walk which resulted in Shannen leaving the show. In another Alyssa was the one that gave the ultimatum. The crew was not overjoyed with Shannen leaving because while they didn´t love Shannen, they preferred her over Alyssa.
 

Alyssa and Holly were at odds over what they should do. Alyssa felt the show was fair at giving storylines and wanted to keep the trajectory of the viewership. Holly felt obligated to and a sense of friendship with Shannen Doherty and wanted to ban together to work towards a mutual ground with production. Because of this tension, there were some hard feelings around, mostly between Holly Marie Combs and Alyssa Milano.

Alyssa's contract of course had been renegotiated as well as Holly's and that is why the two stayed longer. Rose came around this time, and CHARMED survived the shake up with all cast feeling happy about that.


Shannen left with her rights intact to receive royalties and percentages from the show, and she didn't care if they let her go. She had money still coming in from the series run, and the DVD sales. So in all, she made a lot of money. Also, her reputation remained intact as well, she felt that her time on CHARMED showed that she could be professional.

And that´s all for anything else you have to consult the CHARMED FAQs .

BEYOND THE CHARMED LIFE : OF MISTRESSES AND HACKTIVISTS

Since the bonus part of this post will be all CHARMED I should probably cover the other series she was in. After WHO´S THE BOSS she played Jennifer Mancini on MELROSE PLACE which I initially watched because of all the hot babes like Daphne Zuniga, Marcia Cross ( she had a storyline where she went crazy which in tv terms means" nymphomanic ", what a performance ! ), Stacy Haiduk or Lisa Rinna ( her lips are sexier than Angelina Jolie´s ). Later on I watched it because of Alyssa and her brother Dr. Michael Mancini on the show whom I always called Wylie Coyote because he always had very elaborate plans to get what he wants.


In those shows the guys and girls are always trying desperately to get together with a certain partner only to loose interest and start betraying them with somebody else as soon as they have accomplished their goal. In any case, the life lesson that I learned from Wylie is that when you start lying you stick with it. Because even if you would tell the truth people would not believe that now you are telling the truth and what you said earlier was a lie. So even if they find out you lied you have to say you didn´t. Because if you were not lying but it looks like you are lying because there is some proof against you what would you do ? You would say that you are not lying. Which is the only thing you could do. And in the end lying is always better than telling the truth. Just ask any politician.

Speaking about politicians on SPIN CITY she played Meg, the daughter of New York mayor Randall M Winston Jr who was always causing trouble for Michael J Fox´s character who was the mayor´s chief political adviser. 


I would have liked to see more episodes of the show but in Germany it was shown closed to the public by putting it in ridiculous time slots.

First it was shown at two o´clock after midnight and then at five o´clock in the morning when nobody could see it. Later on it was shown in the afternoon during the weekends. They always do that with american hit shows like NORTHERN EXPOSURE or SEINFELD so that they don´t get good ratings and later can proclaim " Those shows may be a big hit with the uneducated americans but we germans are much more sophisticated than these stupid cowboys and not so easily entertained. " And then they go and copy every american show there is and do a horrible version of it.

Anyway, Alyssa reprised her role in 2001, the mischievous little minx.


Alyssa was on MY NAME IS EARL but since I didn´t watch many episodes ( my mother can´t stand it ) I can´t say much about it. I found the initial idea interesting - somebody trying to fix his bad karma by making a list of all the people he wronged and then putting things right - but the show is just too " redneck " for me. In lack of a better term. I know that some people get off on this kind of comedy but as someone who comes from the lower levels of society I know that just because you are poor doesn´t automatically mean you are uneducated or stupid. Was she Earl´s wife ?

 
Another sitcom with Alyssa I missed was ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED. I´m not even sure if it was shown on german tv. Either it ended up the same way as SPIN CITY or it was shown on one of the cable channels you generally don´t watch like Comedy Central. It lasted - what - 6 episodes ?


The same goes for MISTRESSES. Except the six episode part, they had at least two seasons. But so far I have only seen some clips with Alyssa from the show via the internet so I don´t know anything about the quality.

Before we come to the link / video section there is the comic connection part we have to do. Yes, there is a comic part since this is still a comic blog - appearances may be deceiving. The obvious ones  are that Alyssa played the daughter of Arnold Schwarzenegger in COMMANDO ( which was called PHANTOM COMMANDO in Germany ) and Arnold also played Robert E. Howard´s CONAN who was adapted as a comic by Marvel comics which was for the most part illustrated by the incomparable John Buscema. 


Also her love interest on CHARMED, Cole, was played by Julian McMahon who also was Doctor Doom on what are now considered " the good " Fantastic Four movies and whom I first saw in this Danii Minogue video.



On the DC side of things she has done the voice of Aimee Brenner on DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS : THE SPECTRE and SUPERMAN / SHAZAM ! : THE RETURN OF BLACK ADAM and Poison Ivy on an episode of YOUNG JUSTICE.

She has also created a comic called HACKTIVIST which was published by ARCHAIA and which has returned for a second volume because of the big success of the first story. Now more and more actors do their own comic book and in the case of Alyssa Milano she had an idea but didn´t want it to be diluted by a tv studio so she went to a comic book company instead. Which in my opinion is way better than when comic book companies bring writers who are successful at writing tv shows in to do monthly comics. Only to have those writers realize that writing a tv show is nothing like writing comics. Anyway, Alyssa co - writes the book with Jackson Lanzig and Colin Kelly and the art is done by Marcus To and Ian Herring. The " Hollywood pitch " for the series would be What if Anonymous was just one guy who tried to change the world through social media in secret ?


Some comic people are bugged when actors or people from the world of television make comics but it is understandable and you hear from most that they do it because it´s a freeing experience and a change of pace.

Which makes sense. When you do a tv show everybody and the janitor´s dog tries to get involved because they all have such big egos. When you make a comic you have much more control over your idea because it´s shared by a relatively small number of people. Somebody compared doing a comic to writing a movie, then shooting it and acting in it. But I would say it goes even beyond that. Because when you are making a movie it ends with the casting, the lighting and the set decoration. You can choose the camera angles but that´s about it. With comics that is where it starts. Doing comics is not only like shooting a movie but also deciding if it´s in black and white or color, if it´s shown in a theater or on tv or on a wall with forty monitors. You can have hundred artists draw the same scene and it never looks the same while if you have the same actor play the same scene a hundred times the differences will not be that great.

Also the budget is not a problem. If you can draw it that´s it. You can draw one spaceship or an whole armada the only difference it makes is that it takes more time to draw an entire armada. Unless you use the old " copy paste ". But in comic books your imagination is the only real limit.


Making comics is easy because when you boil down to it all you need is a pencil and paper. So that´s pretty low maintenance compared to all the things you need when you are making a movie or tv series. Granted, the regular life of a guy who makes comics is less than glamorous, just ask Terry Hopper about it. But those actors already have the glamour part so they want to get the part where they can express their ideas unfiltered.

For more on HACKTIVIST you can read this to learn what it´s all about , check out the interview with COMIC BOOK RESOURCES or go to this article which includes videos. One of them is short and you can find the long one in the bonus round which will include more videos about HACKTIVIST.  


To start off the video section of the day here´s the first part ( thanks to the restrictions on YouTube ) of the unaired CHARMED pilot episode with Lori Rom. After seeing it I´m not sure if the show would have had any success without Alyssa Milano and I´m glad they got rid of Detective Prettyboy. If you want to compare the performances of both actresses here´s the link to a video with scenes from both versions of Phoebe.



I posted the link to the article about Alyssa´s HACKTIVIST comic with the videos above because I knew I would need all the slots in this section for Alyssa´s appearances on late night shows. This one is from the JIMMY KIMMEL SHOW where looks absolutely stunning in this green dress.


This was on the 15th of April 2010 so she is promoting ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED. Like our first clip you can find this on YouTube in parts.



Here is Alyssa with a nice window on ARSENIO HALL on the 4th of December 2013 as one of the judges of PROJECT RUNWAY ALL STARS.



I kept the best for the last as Alyssa is almost spilling out of her top in this video. Too bad the poor girl is freezing so much she has to cover herself up with a bunny - and no, that´s not a set up for a lewd joke.


We all knew that THE LATE LATE SHOW with Craig Ferguson was low budget but apparently they can´t even afford to pay their heating bill. So my hat´s off to Alyssa who was a real trooper and held on. To the bunny. 



With all the posting and putting the post back into the draft folder then splitting it up and reposting it I have lost all orientation if it´s now the turn of a girl or a guy from the casting shows so I chose this one to express my true feelings for Alyssa Milano. Happy birthday, girlfriend.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Another day, another celebrity birthday. Today Jenny Agutter celebrates her 63rd birthday. Jenny has starred in many movies like THE EAGLE HAS LANDED ( yes, there really is a movie with that title ), THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS or cult movies like AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON or DARKMAN. To Today´s movie going audiences she´s probably best known for her part of Councilwoman Hawley on AVENGERS and CAPTAIN AMERICA : WINTER SOLDIER but the movie she´s most associated with is the sci fi classic LOGAN`S RUN.


Since I already did a lengthy post on POP CULTUR ICON - LOGAN`S RUN that covered pretty much everything from the movie to the tv series and the comics I thought I could start what will hopefully become a series.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I´m a huge George Perez fan and at the start of his long career George did a comic adaption of LOGAN`S RUN that lasted seven issues in 1997. For the longest time I have been searching for material on that but there is not much I could find. Than recently, when I was looking for something else, I found an old CD which contained the complete run of this series. So as I have not seen this material anywhere else on the internet I plan on posting the entire series.


But before we start I have to a mention one more thing. You may have noticed that the post on Alyssa Milano I started Yesterday has vanished.

That´s because in my zeal to do the best Alyssa Milano post ever I may have posted more GIFs than the internet is able to handle. So despite all the work it took me to do the post I will probably have to split it into two ( or more ) posts : one which is the main post and where I will have to substitute some of the GIFs with ordinary pictures and one bonus round which will probably be Alyssa Milano´s Top Ten Outfits on CHARMED. Until the posts are finished they will remain in the draft folder but I´ll try to put up the basic version of the Alyssa Milano post up as soon as possible.

But now let´s start with the first issue of LOGAN`S RUN by Gerry Conway, George Perez and Klaus Janson which doesn´t have a title, oddly enough.


Before we come to the link and video section I have to mention another cult siren who celebrates her 58th anniversary : sexbomb Joyce Hyser.

And before you ask : you don´t know Joyce Hyser, you don´t remember the movie JUST ONE OF THE GUYS for which she is best known but I bet you remember this scene where she shows her incredibly big ..... talents.


Back in the 80s your best bet to see some naked breasts were screwball comedies because you knew even if the script was totally worthless and the actors without any kind of talent you were going to get boobage. Joyce Hyser may not be famous and may not have played in the best movies but every prebubescent boy growing up in the 80s saw this movie.

And to think she almost didn´t do it. Joyce had a no nudity clause in her contract and was against showing her wonder twins especially after a female friend told her : " Honey, WITH THOSE BREASTS if you GO TOPLESS in that scene, NO ONE you meet will EVER look you INTO YOUR EYES again ." Thankfully she shot the scene showing her breasts and without showing them and in the end decided that the scene didn´t work if she didn´t go topless. This is what I call " poetry in motion ".


So the thanks of an entire generation of hormone driven boys is yours for logic winning over superstition. Or naked breasts winning over whatever.

Today´s link section is rather short because I already had all the material for this post. There are still two sites I want to mention, TRANSPARENT - ALUMINIUM which has a post on Maitland Ward´s cosplay as Jessica 6 from LOGAN`S RUN and SPACE BITCHES , a tumblr feed with tons of cool sci fi babes, vintages magazine covers and artwork from master artists. 


There is always talk about an upcoming remake of LOGAN`S RUN and I half expected to be able to post at least a trailer of the new version. But there has been no real progress on that front since my last post in 2011 so here is a documentary about the making of the original movie.



Now I can´t do a post that involves George Perez without mentioning the best series he worked on, THE NEW TEEN TITANS. I really have to find the time to do the often postponed BLACK AND WHITE SUNDAY - GEORGE PEREZ´ NEW TEEN TITANS post. His art is just absolutely george - ous !


From his work on THE NEW TEEN TITANS the best single issue story - and maybe the best story of his entire run - has to be Who Is Donna Troy ? Naturally this has been retconned numerous times since then but it´s still a classic tale in which George Perez takes those people to school who say you can´t do epic in one issue. I just love a good " done in one " story.



We´re staying with Robin and start the Christmas themed videos since next week is Christmas week. Last Year Scott Niswander from COMIC MISCONCEPTIONS presented the Christmas tale BATMAN - THE SEARCH FOR SANTA CLAUS. I wonder what he will do for an encore this year.



This post doesn´t have much about Jenny so to remedy that situation here is a video from FILMBAR70 that shows her in various roles.



Now if you want to celebrate Jenny´s birthday but don´t have one of her movies in your movie collection here is THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

As promised here is the part about Alyssa Milano´s best scenes / outfits on CHARMED that I had to cut from my original ALYSSA MILANO BIRTHDAY POST which has gotten way longer than I had thought and now includes a lot of new stuff like her comic HACKTIVIST so you might want to go back.


Now before coming to the Top Ten - actually the Top Fourteen as I included four runners up - I have to mention that the selection here is absolutely subjective on my part based on which episodes I have seen and which made the biggest lasting impression on me. You may have other favorite scenes / outfits of Alyssa Milano that you might want to see included here which you can let me know in the comment section. This post is further more limited by the fact that I don´t have a photographic memory so I might have forgotten some episodes. And last but not least I also had to work with what I had which means that I could not make GIFs of episodes where I don´t have a clip. Bear that in mind when you read the following.


So here we are with the runners up which for various reasons didn´t make it into the Top Ten of Alyssa Milano best scenes / out fits on CHARMED. I didn´t number these, not including them in the Top Ten was hard enough.

Our first episode that didn´t make it into the top Ten is season 5, episode 6 in which Alyssa wears an orange top with a very generous window. While it´s a great view she only wore it at the last minutes.


Episode 17 from season 6 might have made it into the Top Ten if it wasn´t for the stiff competition ( no pun intended ). In the episode Phoebe goes to her High School reunion and wears a thin silver dress where you can see her pokies in numerous scenes. She also bends over quite a lot so that you can see a lot of cleavage. It´s a great episode.


Now episode 5 from season 7 was actually in my Top Ten but I had to take it out because of another episode that was with the runners up where Phoebe is wearing a green bikini top. I mean here Alyssa Milano has a giant cleavage and as you can almost see her full boobs she´s practically topless but an episode where she´s only wearing a green bikini top and her pants are hanging waaaay low - that just belongs in the Top Ten.


Our last runner up is another one that didn´t make it in the top position because the good part is too short. In episode 11 of season 5 Phoebe is at an office party in a black dress with a big cleavage that displays her huge breasts wonderfully. She and her boss are the last ones left and sparks fly which leads to a night of passion and the beginning of her romance with the boss which happens quite often in the series. Somebody once said that it´s strange how different men and women are written in tv series and that while female leads often get involved with their superiors male leads seldom have a relationship at the workplace. Also female leads tend to have trouble finding a good partner as even the most perfect man doesn´t seem good enough while for male leads often any warm body seems good enough. Anyway, Alyssa looks hot in this dress and the best moment is when she grabs the guy´s head and her left boob is flexed.


And with that we have finally arrived at our countdown. There were a few other episode I wanted to include but that would eff up the upload time completely and it takes like forever to make these GIFs and I want to finish the damn thing. So here are the Top Ten and maybe I will do an updated version with more runners up at Alyssa´s birthday next year.

Number 10 - Alyssa in underwear - yay ! ( season 4, episode 15 )

Not only is Alyssa´s corsage at least three sizes to small ( so that her melons are on the brink of popping out each second ) thanks to her heavy breathing and hectic movement Alyssa achieves incredible tv effects which could only be topped by 3D tv. Which was not a technology that was available when I was writing this but which some tvs have gotten in the meantime. I´d like to check out if this has the effect I predicted then.


Number 9 - Alyssa tanned in a green bikini top ( season 6, episode 1 )

This is the clip I was talking about earlier. I had it in the runner ups section but when I was making the GIF I was like : " Holy $hit, she´s wearing less than in the episode above where she is in underwear and she looks good enough to eat so why is this not in my Top Ten ? " So I had to put here there kicking the episode with the giant cleavage out. Daimn, Alyssa looks so fit and lean and thanks to her low hanging pants she´s barely covered from her toe to way beyond her bellybottom. It´s kind of strange that it´s acceptable for women to wear less clothing during the day as when they put on underwear. Not that I´m complaining though.


Number 8 - Alyssa as cult siren Elvira ( season 3, episode 4 )

Longtime readers of this blog already know that I´m a huge fan of Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark or that I have an unhealthy and unfulfilled sexual obsession with her. It all depends on how you want to put it. In any case Alyssa Milano dressing up as Elvira is the coming together of the best of two worlds in a crossover that makes all my wet dreams come true !  


Alyssa really brings the goods in this Halloween ( or All Hallow´s Eve ) episode and I´ll be damned if she wasn´t perfect for the lead role in Elvira´s Nympnomanic Daughter - She sucks hard - but not Blood !


Maybe Alyssa can even make Elvira´s signature " boob buster " move.


And if you don´t believe me that Alyssa can fill out Elvira´s cleavage with ease look at this from the same episode where she lets it all hang out.


Number 7 - Alyssa taxing a push up ( season 3, episode 6 )

Now with most of the push ups Alyssa wears on CHARMED their job is more a thing of sustaining the breasts while covering the bare essentials. This one however is all about volume and does it´s best to push as push can and damn the consequences with Alyssa´s overflowing big talent.


Number 6 - almost popping out of white dress ( season 5, episode 3 )

This is another episode which was not originally in my Top Ten but I had to include it because Alyssa´s breasts are almost popping out of her top and unlike in some other episodes she wears this dress for most of the time.


White seems to be Alyssa´s color as she demonstrates in A ROSE FOR EVERAFTER on CASTLE where her dress can hardly contain her. Can you blame Castle for getting involved with her even if she´s a suspect ?


Number 5 - Alyssa going topless ( season 3, episode 7 )

One of the best episodes is the one where Phoebe and her sisters fight although to really appreciate it you have to see the uncut edition that was aired only in european countries where Alyssa Milano goes full frontal for most of the show. There were some episodes where she was supposed to be naked - like when she became Lady Godiva - but we didn´t see any skin. Here Alyssa does the full monty and her juicy firm breasts......


Okay, I´m only joking. Alyssa never did do full frontal nudity on CHARMED but with this heavily cleavaged dress it looks that way in some scenes. 


While she does not get naked in this episode Alyssa has never shown more boob nor have her melons looked hotter than in this outfit. With her big breasts pushed almost up to her chin this just has to be in the top 5.


Some people say that the fights between Shannen Doherty and the rest of the cast was pretty much like the fight in this episode but that probably mostly gossip and who knows what really went on behind the scenes ?


Apparently Shannen Doherty was miffed because everybody saw Alyssa Milano as the sexy one and not her. She even tried to slut it up as best as she could but she just was not in the same league as her. And the make up and wardrobe guys at the show must have thought so too because that´s the only explanation why they put this garish make up on her and gave her this ugly coat. I know this is supposed to look native american like but it looks more like indian pimp who owns a casino than anything.

Or grown up Pocahontas who has to work as a hooker. I have to say, I wouldn´t mind to tap that because Shannen has some serious tits there.


She looks like the female version of pimped out Kramer from SEINFELD.


Let´s face it : which one of these two would you pick for a sex date ?


Now you might say that Alyssa´s outfit is much more favorable but Alyssa got Shannen beat even if she is wearing a simple sweater or a pullover.

And speaking about sweat this brings us to our episode number 4.

Number 4 : Alyssa totally wet - double D double feature

This is actually two episodes, the first one is Enter the Demon ( nice Bruce Lee reference ), the fourth episode from season 4 in which Phoebe has a hot and sweaty training session with Cole. Working out and kicking ass Alyssa scores with a winning cleavage, an exposed midsection that´s ripped beyond belief and being covered in sweat. An unbeatable combo.


The other episode where Alyssa is covered in sweat is episode 5 form season 2 and to complicate matters more she actually wears two outfits. In the episode Phoebe is psychically linked to a succubus which sadly did not have the effect I had hoped for - Phoebe turning into a mega horny nymphomaniac and going on a weekend long sex spree. What did happen was that she was sweating through almost the entire episode like in this white dress which fits her like a second skin. With her nipples pushing through the thin fabric you get a pretty good idea how she would look naked. Plus, she´s leaning over to give the audience a good view of her.


The other outfit from the episode is this little sado maso number that says " take me, whip me, cuff me to your bedpost " which the male audience would only too willing obey. Alyssa really does a top notch performance unlike Shannon Doherty who is not very believable as a guy.  


Number 3 : Alyssa doing a lapdance ( season 5, episode 11 )

Number 3 on the list has to be the scene where Alyssa does a lapdance. I wonder who writes those things into the script, but it was probably Alyssa herself. Makes you wonder where she trained for it and how many times during the shooting of this scene Julian McMahon had to run off and relief his swollen manhood. I bet this was like getting a giant viagra overdose.


I always thought that after Alyssa got him hard enough to cut diamonds he banged her brains out after the shooting but as I recently read he was drilling Shannon Doherty like a cheap prostitute ( which his wife didn´t find particularly amusing ) while Alyssa tamed Brian Krause ( which led to the break up of his marriage ). There are also rumors that Alyssa was extracting Julian McMahon´s manjuices ( which I referred to in the title ) while Shannon was breaking him in which led to friction. Only Holly Marie Combs didn´t sleep around and returned every night to her husband. 

Number 2 : Alyssa as a belly dancer ( season 5, episode 10 )

How do you get one of the best Alyssa Milano CHARMED scenes ? You just need one sexy Alyssa wearing a harem girl outfit and shaking what mother nature has given her so generously in an improv fertility dance.


Number 1 : Alyssa as a mermaid ( season 5, episodes 1 and 2 )

This HAS to be my number 1 pick as you just can´t beat Alyssa Milano wearing nothing more than basically pasties and a fishtail prosthetic. Which makes it odd enough that I had to make this GIF myself. With all the GIFs from this episodes on the internet you might think that someone would have covered the best scene but no, they did all the other scenes.

If the make up artists on CHARMED were male I bet they loved their jobs.


Between Rose´s permanently erect nipples, Alyssa's loose tops, and scenes like these, it must have been an very ' hard ' job. There were probably some serious fights to decide who got the privilege to paste those nipples patches on Alyssa's boobies. They probably had dozens of volunteers to do it for free and some who tried to pay for it - every day!

" Are you absolutely sure the best way to get the glue off my breasts is to lick it off, Mr Make Up Guy  ? And why does it always take two hours ? "

" It´s a hard job but somebody has to do it. Now let me do my work, you wouldn´t want anything to happen to your perfect puppies, Miss Milano. "

The guys were probably making excuses to get her in that outfit again.

" Sorry Miss Milano, but somehow the material we shot Yesterday has disappeared. So we´ll just have to re - shoot all of the mermaid scenes. "


And this is the end of the Alyssa Milano posts. I´m going to pack all the unused GIFs away for next year and go straight to the video section.

There are a lot of Alyssa Milano tribute videos from CHARMED you can find on YouTube so instead of posting one of these here are a few videos about her HACKTIVIST comic book which I couldn´t fit into the main post.



This one is not with Alyssa but with the creators of the comic book series.



Here we have a really large video about the second story of HACKTIVIST.



This is one bikini I would have loved to see on Alyssa Milano, massita.



Christmas is coming soon so here is a video with the Justice League celebrating the holiday. Okay, the guys in the video are pretty annoying but to tell the truth I only picked this for the mega hot Power Girl cosplayer. I wouldn´t mind to stuff her stockings if you get my drift.



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You are probably sick of the disappearing and re - appearing Alyssa Milano post and with all the trouble of splitting the Bart Sears birthday post into two and then doing the same with the Alyssa Milano post I totally forgot that this is my 600th post. So I wanted to make this special and at the same time do something for Christmas since I don´t know if I can post on the holidays so there was only one name that came to mind : Jim Aparo.


He has done his share of Christmas stories - on THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and THE OUTSIDERS - but I have chosen THE NIGHT THE MOB STOLE CHRISTMAS ! Mostly because it´s the only Christmas story I have from Jim Aparo in it´s entirety. A lot of people say that the comics from this period never dealt with any problems but here we have Plastic Man as a homeless person, what we called a hobo back in the days and which in the story is referred to as a panhandler because a woman broke his heart in a previous adventure. I also love Batman´s enthusiasm as .... but let´s not spoil things. Here´s the story from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 148 which according to the DC wikipedia was drawn by Joe Staton and inked by Jim Aparo. And since they are credited with " artists " I´ll go with that.


See what I mean ? One minute he gets almost drowned the next he´s all : " Plastic Man, you did it again ! " One thing´s for sure. You won´t hear Batman say anything close to " Let´s start highballin´ ourselves for the Sunshine Estate ! " in DC´s NEW 52. But let´s get on with the story.


There was also a house ad in the issue and since the artist is not listed anywhere I´m going out on a limb and say it´s by mi paisano Jose Luis Garcia Lopez. Who did all of the advertisement around that time.


His art is so gorgeous. I recently bought the ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN by JOSE LUIS GARCIA LOPEZ hardcover because it was in my shopping cart for ages and I thought " What the h - word are you waiting for ? You´re not getting any younger. "I thought about giving it away as a Christmas present but as soon as I got my hands on it that idea was done with. Finito. Over. Kaput. As usual DC has no introduction or extras in this but it´s worth it for the art. There are some stories that I hadn´t realized were drawn by him which I read in the SUPERMAN SUPERBAND.


So I hope you got all your ducks in a row for Christmas Day. Where I´m concerned there are still some comics left from my Big Christmas Contest which was not as popular as the last time. I guess most comic readers in Germany know where to get their free gratis comics by now. Thankfully somebody came up at the last minute who will take the most of it but I don´t think I can send it to him before the holidays. In any case Merry Christmas and I hope this helped to get you into the right mood. Party !


Since Plastic Man was the star of Today here´s the intro to his cartoon show. Yeah, I didn´t know he had one either but this really happened.



He even had live action segments by a cheesy actor. Or a method actor.



I know that in Britian Doctor Who and Christmas go together like stollen and Glühwein in Germany. The next Christmas episode will not be aired until a few days so I already watched THE NEXT DOCTOR which is THE best Doctor Who Christmas Special EVER. Of course I could not find the episode on YouTube but I found something even better. A Doctor Who / Back to The Future mash up called BLINK TO THE FUTURE. I didn´t make a special post on Back To The Future Day ( you may remember that in BACK TO THE FUTURE II Marty McFly travels to October 21st, 2015 ) this might make up for it. You can also check out this link to see fourteen predictions that the movie made which actually did come true.



For our music video of the day I chose one from THE VOICE OF HOLLAND : Maan with The Power of Love, one of the songs you hear EVERY year.



And finally here´s Yaya Han with Christmas greetings in three languages.



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Yesterday I wrote that I´m not sure if I can post something new before Christmas so typically - just to prove me wrong - Today I have some free time and find myself in front of the laptop. So I thought why not take a look at how our favorite comic superheroes spend the festive season ?


Yesterday I posted the entire story from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 148 but Today I want to get as many Christmas stories as possible into this.

Naturally there will be a pretty long link section since everybody is doing Christmas stories at this time of the year and I have to admit many of these posts are better than anything I could come up with. I also want you to check out my fellow link partners from the blog roll. That said there will be a lot of comic book pages in this post, I just hope this doesn´t turn into another one of these superlong posts. Yeah, right. Keep dreaming, Subzero. Ahhh ..... don´t stop, Janet. There´s plenty of room in my bed beside Mariah Carey, Halle Berry, Beyonce, Tylene Buck, Akira Lane, Miko Lee Jessica Nigri, Yaya Han ..... oh, that´s not what you meant ? Sorry.

Ahem, back from what I want for Christmas to the Christmas stories and I think it´s best if we start with the Christmas stories I already covered.

My first full on Christmas post was last year when I wrote about UNCANNY X - MEN 230 and Marc Silvestri´s incredible run on the book in general. I hope I can continue with that topic very soon and that I can read the UNCANNY X - MEN : INFERNO PROLOGUE omnibus ( bought it ) until then.


In the story the X - Men are making themselves at home in the Reaver´s old headquarters in Australia when Longshot gets mindfried by all the stolen loot the Revers stashed ( Longshot has the ability of psychometry which means he can read objects ). After a discussion if they should do this they decide to return the stolen goods to their rightful owners. 


While I´m a big fan of that period of the book I´m not quite sure why the X - Men never told the other mutant teams that they were still alive.

For those that don´t know this period, in the previous FALL OF THE MUTANTS storyline the X - Men went up against a mega powerful magic entity called The Adversary with the help of Roma and seemingly died in Dallas, where the big battle took place saving the whole world once again.

Which the X - Men have done a number of times. Mostly in secret without anybody knowing. But this time they did it in front of the tv cameras.


So after the X - Men had given their lives while defeating The Adversary Roma managed to bring them back. With the world at large thinking of them as the mutant heroes who sacrificed themselves and the team now impossible to detect or record on electronic devices thanks to a gift from Roma the X - Men decided to use the new Status Quo to their advantage.

Which I totally get. Public opinion is a very fickle thing and even if the X - Men may be hailed as heroes Today it doesn´t take long until the winds of change swing to the opposite direction and bring back old prejudices and anti mutant hysteria. So it´s better that Joe Public doesn´t know the X - Men are still alive and kicking. On the other hand the argument that the X - Men are protecting their loved ones by not telling them is pretty thin. And with the hindsight of all the trouble this caused it was a really bad idea. I guess it´s one of these things like the fault of communication in all those Hammer movies. I have seen a dozen since Halloween and every time a lot of grief and unnecessary deaths could have been avoided if people talked with each other instead of thinking that if they ignore Dracula nothing bad will ever happen. But that´s the topic for a few posts next year. Right now I only want to make it clear that things like INFERNO would have been only half as devastating ( although possibly also half as entertaining ) for them if the X - Men hadn´t kept their survival secret.


Another famous X - Men story is DEMON from UNCANNY X - MEN 143 by the classic dream team of Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin.


The story is kind of HOME ALONE meets DIE HARD / GHOSTBUSTERS with the X - Men as Kitty Pryde, who is relatively new on the team at his time, gets to stay alone at X - mansion while all the other X - Men are away for the holidays. Which gives Kitty free run of the house but also poses a big problem as she has to fend of an N´Garai demon. The story is Kitty´s baptism of fire ( although you could argue that was the DARK PHOENIX story in which she had to come in and rescue the team ) and it´s - like most of this quieter solo stories the title is so famous for - full of nice character moments like Kitty catching Colossus under the mistletoe.  


So we´ve seen what the X - Men usually do on Christmas but how does somebody like Daredevil spend his time on the day of Christ´s birth ?

Well, in the case of DAREDEVIL 253 called Merry Christmas, Kingping ( which I mentioned in this post about the MARVEL VISIONARIES - JOHN ROMITA JR book ) he spends it ridding the streets of a pair of vicious muggers and celebrating with all the clients of the free legal advice clinic.


It´s a really good story but so far it was only available as part of the MARVEL VISIONARIES book which for some strange reason Grand Comics Database fails to mention in their list of where the story was reprinted.

Which is another reason why I will continue with the posts now that I have bought four more volumes from this line. Because not all databases list really ALL the comics where certain stories are reprinted and you might miss out on some bargain books which I´m always glad to let my readers know of. Now if you want to read this story - as well as another great Christmas story I will get to in a moment - and don´t need the oversized hardcover treatment of the MARVEL VISIONARIES Disney is releasing the Epic Collection A Touch Of Typhoid on January the 26th which collects all the issues starting with DAREDEVIL 253 going all the way to issue 270. That´s a big junk of Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr comic goodness.


I know I´m a comic whore as someone once said because I always find a comic worth buying in a comic box no matter how much junk is in it.

And I keep bitching about the Marvel Epic Collection trades, that they are too expensive, that you can´t read them very easily. I also keep buying them and my resistance is wearing down, especially after receiving the last volume I ordered together with the two brilliant IRON MAN collections Stark Wars and War Games which may very well be the best volume they ever released next to Thor - War of the Pantheons. Of course I´m talking about POWER MAN AND IRON FIST - HEROES FOR HIRE which reprints one of the best Marvel series from the Bronze Age ever in all of it´s recolored glory. A few months back when I got a whole bunch of ESSENTIALS that included LUKE CAGE, POWER MAN vol 2 and POWER MAN AND IRON FIST vol 2 and this new trade fills almost the entire gap between those two. I also have the ESSENTIAL IRON FIST volume which is almost reprinted in the The Fury of Iron Fist Epic Collection ( they skipped the last issues because they´re in the POWER MAN AND IRON FIST Epic Collection ).

Man, POWER MAN AND IRON FIST that´s blaxploitation meets martial arts in the best way. Luke Cage and Daniel Rand have one of the best buddy buddy relationships in comics despite - or maybe because of - coming from totally different backgrounds. We start with John Byrne, then have a few artists inbetween like Mike Zeck and Trevor Von Eeden before we come to Kerry Gamill and when he becomes the regular artist it´s on !   


Kerry Gamill´s pages are so dynamic, his storytelling so precise and his anatomy so flawless that it´s almost like he was born to draw martial arts comics. I remember how excited I was when he became part of the art team during John Byrne´s revamped SUPERMAN titles in the eighties.


It´s such a shame that he left the world of comics, he did great work for DC and Marvel. I really have to continue with my SUPERMAN posts. And speaking about Marvel the Epic Collection Heroes for Hire gets my utmost recommendation. I think I will probably buy the next volume ( whenever it does come out ) even though I have most of the issues in the black and white ESSENTIAL version now because this looks just so good in color.


Okay, before we got totally distracted on this tangent we were talking about another Daredevil Christmas story within the A Touch of Typhoid Epic Collection which is DAREDEVIL issue 266, A Beer with the Devil.

If I had steadily continued with the LIKE A BOOK OUT OF HELL posts we would have already covered this because the story takes place after all the events in the INFERNO mega crossover event. Matt has lost Karen Page - again - and as usual it´s his own fault. So he spends the day in a seedy bar as Daredevil, drinking and wallowing in his own misery which is one of the things he does best. To be fair, it hasn´t been the best year for Matt Murdock as the Kingpin destroyed his life with the help of Typhoid Mary which was much more successful than his attempt in BORN AGAIN. And if this whole emotionally and physically taxing rollercoaster wasn´t enough he had to deal with Hell´s Kitchen becoming invaded by hordes of demons during INFERNO. No wonder he´s going to burn all his remaining stuff ( which does not work with Captain America ) and go on a tour of suburban America hard travelling hero style a few issues down the line.

But for now Daredevil is nursing his beer at the bar and like in a lot of SPIRIT stories the focus of most of the issue is on the other customers which includes an aged woman with delusions of past grandeur, a guy who still bitches about his divorce which happened many years back and a couple of brothers who start to argue. During all this an alluring woman enters the bar, sits next to Daredevil and starts flirting with the hero. 


Well, we assume that it´s a woman because that´s how she presents herself to Daredevil, a woman who has just betrayed her husband, but other people in the bar see her as a guy or a menacing mugger which tells the reader right away that something is not right about this whole set up.

While she is trying to seduce Daredevil and testing the boundaries of his morals things heat up in the bar, voices are raised, the customers get more desperate, tempers flare up and most noticeable the argument between the two brothers escalates until one of them kills the other.  


Daredevil was oblivious to all this because he was tongue wrestling with the mystery woman / man and when Daredevil tries to confront her to find out why she orchestrated all of this she reveals himself as Mephisto.


Who pops up quite a lot in my posts lately. Coincidence ? In any case I remember that John Romita Jr´s drastic redesign of Mephisto didn´t find approval with everyone. I didn´t mind but I also like the classic look.


During INFERNO we saw a version of Daredevil that preserved against a sea of demons apparently through the force of his indomitable will.


But that fight has taken its toll on Matt and after being devastated in body as well as in mind he has nothing left to offer any resistance to Mephisto who grows to enormous size, wrecking the bar in the process.


For Kaiju Mephisto Daredevil is just a tiny speck of red garbed flesh that amuses him because he dresses up as him. He judges and punishes other people while ignoring his own sins which will sooner or later make him a subject of M once he has died for real ( he was resurrected in INFERNO ).


John Romita Jr´s Mephisto was really different and I don´t think we have seen Mephisto grow in size before. Which makes total sense because he´s the devil and can do anything. Or A devil. Knowing that Daredevil will be his sooner or later Mephisto promises that this was not the last encounter between them and lets him fall. As Daredevil regains his senses the bar is undamaged although I doubt that everything that happened - like the death of the brother - has been reversed. I just don´t peg the devil for being so nice. In any case Daredevil gets picked up by the elderly woman and the guy who was bitching about his divorce and the three of them go to a nearby soup kitchen for Christmas dinner. It´s a really great story with stunning artwork by John Romita Jr and inker Al Williamson as well as a lot of realism which might have something to do with the fact that it was based on a real Christmas experience Ann Nocenti had .


Speaking about Mephisto, when last we saw him he was busy with the machinations during the Soul Shroud Saga like in THOR 443 where Eric Masterson went to hell ( quite literally ) to get Thor´s hammer back.


The next issue was quite a change of pace as the Eric Masterson Thor goes up against the Grinch ..... or rather the Groonk how he is called for copyright reasons in the story titled " How the Groonk stole Christmas ! ".


Eric is doing some last minute Christmas shopping for his son Kevin and he is so lost in thought that he doesn´t notice how a woman passes him by until she is mugged. I always liked the more mundane aspects of Eric´s life as a single parent even though I know that some people didn´t like the character because of it. But it was different then what had come before and it brought a nice human touch to the story like here where both, Eric and the woman, are so absorbed by their own thoughts and problems thinking the other one doesn´t have a care in the world.


Eric immediatelly goes after the perpetrator - still with Kevin´s present tucked under his arm - but he is already gone. Eric is surprised that he still has Kevin´s Christmas present as Thor but I think he should be happy that the transformation didn´t just blow the whole thing to smithereens.


Eric returns to the crime scene where he learns two things. There has been a whole series of incidents where somebody or something mugged people although the person behind this only steals one gift, not always the most expensive one. And Eric overpaid for Kevin´s Super Jammers toy. 


In the end the Groonk turns out to be a benevolent character who stole the presents for a community of people living in the sewers who occupy the part of New York´s sublevel labyrinth that´s not populated by the Morlocks. On one side it is weird that all these people live down there without ever meeting each other. On the other side it is a big city and the tunnels cover a lot of ground. In any case Eric has to make a judgement call and decides to leave the Groonk alone. He doesn´t want to deprive the people who live down in the sewers of their protector. Which doesn´t sit well with Captain America because Eric can´t really explain why he let the Groonk go without also revealing the existence of the underground community, And I think that it speaks volumes about Eric´s character that he prefers to be chewed out by Captain America than break his promise.


Even though Eric doesn´t have it as rough as Daredevil in our previous story his Christmas day has been far from perfect. His apartment has been wrecked though thankfully Captain America offers him to bunk at Avengers mansion, he spent a lot of money on a present trying to impress his son which turned out to be needless since his son loves him anyway and he still felt like a bum compared to the stuff his ex - wife´s new rich husband bought, he couldn´t catch the bad guy and he got another lecture from Cap. It seems the only good thing that happened is that his friend Susan finally awoke from her coma. But when he arrives at his apartment he finds his son who managed to assemble almost the entire supporting cast including Jerry Sapristi and Herkules to celebrate Christmas together.


And I´m afraid that on that rather kitschy note I have to wrap things up for Today. I wanted to include a lot more stories but it´s already starting to take too long to load this post. Maybe we can continue with this topic Tomorrow and if not I´m wishing you a Merry Christmas in advance.


What´s that ? You want to know what Spider - Man does on Christmas since his cover is on the top of this post ? Well, if he´s not busy rescuing Misty Knight from muggers he´s going up against baddies like Stegron. 


Since I had to end Today´s post abruptly the link section is rather short but I don´t want to close without mentioning COMICS ALLIANCE´s post on UNCANNY X - MEN 143 and CRUSHING KRISIS which another indispensable list about Collecting Iron Fist comics as graphic novels ( he means trades and hardcovers ). To read more Christmas stories fellow blog DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND has posts on CREEPY 105 , JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 139 , TEEN TITANS 13 and BATMAN 219 , SON OF TOMAHAWK 138 , FORBIDDEN TALES OF DARK MANSION 15 , HOT WHEELS 6 , MARVEL TWO - IN - ONE 8 , NICK FURY - AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. 10 , DENNIS THE MENACE BONUS MAGAZINE SERIES 147 and many more archived. Enjoy !

We can´t speak about blaxploitation meets martial arts without talking about the best - or cheesiest of them all depending on who you ask ( your mileage may vary, as they say ) - movie from that genre THE LAST DRAGON which I saw under the title EL ULTIMO DRAGON in Spain. The movie is so great that a mexican wrestler named himself after it.


One of the reasons why I decided to include this movie in the video section is that together with martial arts classic KARATE KID the movie celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and was released on Blue Ray . 

To think that there are entire generations of people out there who have never heard of Bruce Leroy or " the glow ", oh, the sheer horror of it !



The film features Taimak in the lead role ( there is an interview on BLACKFILM where he talks aboutThe Last Dragon : 30 Years later ) and while it has its lengths in some parts the final payoff is great. Spoiler.



The movie incorporated the music of Motown Records and the hits that spun out of it were Rhythm of the Night from El Debarge and The Glow.



The female lead was played by Vanity who had her best scene not in THE LAST DRAGON but in NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE, a 1986 vehicle for John Stamos who wears the perm to end all perms. From all the " teenager turns super secret agent " movies this is one of the worst examples and John´s transformation of totally useless, lovestruck / horny teenager to strong and confident adult after having sex with Vanity is ridiculous ( although I have to admit that I have no first hand experience for having sex with Vanity so this is total speculation ) but it´s worth watching if only for the parts with Sexbombe Vanity. If you want to watch it you can find the movie on YouTube but don´t blame me, it´s your funeral, pal.



To close things here´s a video of Daredevil 266, A Beer with the Devil.



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I´m doing just a quick post Today so I´m not going to continue with what superheroes do on Christmas. Okay, that´s not entirely true since I am posting a Christmas story from WHAT THE -- ?! 10 (  January 1991 ).


Yes, it´s another great comic from the oh so awful nineties. WHAT THE -- ?! was a series I read as it was coming out which makes me fell quite old since this came 24 years ago. Marvel has a long history of poking fun at itself in its comics or series like the classic NOT BRAND ECCH or the newest Marvel NOW book. What´s that you´re saying ? Marvel NOW is not a parody of the old Marvel comics by publishing dark, twisted versions of classic comics ? Could have fooled me. Anyway, Today´s story I`LL BE DOOM FOR CHRISTMAS showcasing Marvel´s epitome of a villain was written by Scott Lobdell and drawn by John Byrne who has done quite a lot of funny parody stories in this and other magazines. As usual I wanted to add a little twist to it as there have been probably a few websites which have already posted it so I added a few original pages. So I hope you got everything you wanted for Christmas, Happy holidays and enjoy the story.


A few posts ago I posted a video about five forgotten but cool cartoon series and listed some of my favorite cartoon shows. I only had four candidates because I blanked on one of the best cartoon shows ever : Disney´s GARGOYLES. There are a lot of episodes on YouTube but since they are either in bad quality or the picture was cut here is the intro.



Now I could write a lot to try to get across how great GARGOYLES was but since Nostalgia Critic already did a full show on it I´ll just let him explain it. I don´t always agree with him and when he doesn´t like something he can really become annoying and hammers the message into you like with BARB WIRE but here he is right on the money. And I adore Rogue too.



You don´t always find what you look for on YouTube so I still can´t post the Peanuts Christmas special. Instead of it here is an hourlong cartoon special since the videos above don´t really qualify as cartoon videos.



As I said, most often than not you don´t find the things you are looking for but there are other times when you find things you never expected on YouTube like the hot workout video below. It is from the BikinModelFitness channel - which has dozens more of these - and since most people gain a bit of weight over the holidays this might help you burn off some of these calories. Even if I don´t work out it does me a good only watching this.



And speaking about things you don´t expect to find on YouTube, initially I wanted to post a Country Christmas video but then I came across this.



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Once again there is nothing good on television during the Christmas holidays so we continue the topic of what superheroes do on Christmas.


Okay, there are some good movie on tv but nothing I haven´t already seen and while my Mom is hogging the tv I´m writing yet another post.

This year Christmas has been okay where the presents are concerned - more if you look at how my presents were received than what I got. I have stopped a long time ago to judge Christmas depending on what I got because in most cases it´s disappointing and the important thing is the joy we can bring other people, right ? Speaking about that I´m almost done with The Big Christmas Contest as there is still one package I have to prepare although this one is a whopper. As I mentioned in earlier posts the response to my little charity where I give away free comics has been less than overwhelming and I was already counting on having to put most of the remaining comics into the bucket for next year´s competition. But at the last moment somebody has come up who will take most of the comics left so there will be only a few that will be available next year.

Speaking about next year, don´t expect as many updates as I have made this month which had more posts than usual almost coming down to a new post each day this week. But enough about that and let´s get this post started. My last post about how superheroes spend their Christmas got a bit out of hand lengthwise which is why I couldn´t include the following two examples which turned an already Marvel heavy post into a Marvel only post. So in this post I will feature two stories from other companies starting with DC. A lot of posts about Christmas cover feature FLASH 87 because you have Flash fighting three Santas on the cover by Alan Davis but the best Flash Christmas stories is One Perfect Gift from FLASH 73.


Spoilers : the cover blurb " Guest - starring the original Scarlet Speedster " is true and leads the comic reader to assume it means Jay Garrick.


There are some FLASH issues from the second volume that I have bought and still I haven´t read because I am still missing issues 1 and 70.

Which is one of the reasons why I haven´t done any FLASH FRIDAY posts lately. I´m still hoping to find the issues so I can re - read the entire run in one go starting from issue 1 but I´m not sure if I can hold out until Erlangen which is my last chance to find them because I have already tried all comic shops I know. The new Flash tv series is really a blast and I want to do more posts about the Flash but right now I´m undecided.


Okay, back to FLASH 73 the issue which takes place on Christmas Day starts off with Wally West and Jay Garrick having a conversation while they run through Central  City doing super deeds. Now this is one of the reasons why Wally West is my Flash and nobody will ever take his place.

I know that DC is trying to sell Barry Allen right now and I know that is the one we get in the tv series because of DC´s NEW 52. But even the guys from the tv show couldn´t help but steal Wally West´s famous tagline " My name is Wally West and I´m the Flash, the fastest man alive. " from the comics. I also know that Barry Allen has a lot of fans and I myself grew up with him being the Flash. But contrary to what popular belief tells you your favorite version of a superhero is not always the one you grow up with because then I would prefer Barry Allen over Wally West and Hal Jordan over Guy Gardner. My thesis has always been that you tend to the character you can relate the most to or the one you find most interesting.

And while Barry Allen is the iconic one I never found him very interesting.

His sacrifice in Crisis is the thing that defines him the most apart from The Trial of Flash ( I´m ashamed to admit I still haven´t read it yet ) and he was never very memorable in all his other stories. Which is the reason why they came up with the idea that his mother was killed by the Reverse Flash. Call me crazy but that was not part of the flash canon when I grew up. Nowadays they always kill a loved one if they want to make a hero interesting. Whatever happened to good writing ? Speaking about good writing let´s get back to FLASH 73 since I have to include another story. Jay Garrick and Wally West are talking about Wally´s plans in life. 


When Barry died Wally assumed the mantle of Flash which was something that had not happened in comics before. He was the first sidekick who " graduated " and inherited the super hero title after the hero´s death.

He still wasn´t fully grown up and in the second volume of FLASH - and also in the JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE book - we see him become more of an adult and a responsible hero who´s more comfortable in his role. He even changed the look of the Flash costume to individualize him and make people realize that he´s his own man not only a copy of the original Scarlet Speedster. Wally also made the evolution from a guy who always has a new girlfriend to someone who has chosen Linda Park. So the question of marriage comes up as well as what Wally wants for Christmas.


Jay Garrick had become a surrogate father for Wally West and the most interesting issues were when those two get to interact with each other.

So while they are having a conversation and doing their good deeds all over Central City they come across a woman who is about to give birth.


To make matters worse her husband just got fired and plans to knock down his old workplace and help himself to some unplanned holiday gratification. The flashes have to find him and talk him out of it which would be no problem if they could get the woman to a hospital. But because of her delicate condition they have to bring the doctors to her and Jay stays with her while Wally goes to the husband´s workplace.


Finding the errant husband should be a piece of cake for Wally. Except that the guy´s old workplace turns out to be a department store. Okay, usually the Flash would be in and out in a few seconds but it´s Christmas Day so the shop is full of people and Wally can´t use his super speed.

Some people have problems writing such powerful characters like the Flash because they get paralyzed by all the things he can do. But good writers like Mark Waid concentrate on the things he can´t do instead. So in the story Wally of course arrives at the last minute and all things end well. Which is not why this is such a great Christmas story. Everything that has happened until now gives the reader a nice Christmas tale while at the same time fleshing out ( no pun intended ) the character of Wally. 


No, the best part is in the final pages when Joan Garrick asks Wally if he is expecting a visit from " the man in red " and Wally answers that he couldn´t imagine anything Santa Claus could bring him that would be better than what he´s already gotten. Wally is talking about his girlfriend Linda and his extended family with Jay and Joan but Mark Waid still manages to pull a surprise out of his hat that involves the cover blurb. 


Which should not have been that big of a surprise because Jay Garrick never was actually called the Scarlet Speedster but Barry Allen was.

Come on, that´s not a spoiler, the story is almost twenty - three years old. And that´s only the tip of the iceberg. Because with issue 74 the story The Return of Barry Allen began which is one of the best Flash stories of all times. Barry Allen had not be seen in the DC universe and so far death had been final and irreversible. There was a way that Barry Allen could still appear - after all he went to the events of Crisis after spending many years in the 30th century -  but whatever you thought was going to happen next you could not have predicted what happened here.

I can´t wait to elaborate more on this in a future FLASH FRIDAY post. Before closing I want to talk about another comic series : Erik Larsen´s SAVAGE DRAGON. Erik always puts this guy through the wringer and in the early issues of the book Dragon spends the Christmas holiday - and most of the winter - being impaled after a super villain took his right hand.   


And as bad as that was things only got worse when Savage Dragon was finally found - because it was by someone he would have liked to avoid.


Another great Christmas story from the series is issue 70 which is an open homage to Frank Miller´s SIN CITY one shot Silent Night.


I CAN`T BELIEVE I FORGOT THE GL - AVENGERS CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

I thought about doing a post on the weirdest Christmas Special covers but after a bit of research I found out that this kind of post has been already done to death. So while I may still do that if I have the time let´s start the link section of this post with links to other blogs who covered this.


By the way, these are just the ones I found while looking for Christmas covers and I know there are more out there. If you have done a post and want to be included in the list do contact me. First up is COMIC ATTACK which has done an impressive seven posts ( 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 ) on Christmas covers, many of which were unknown to me. Blog BEHIND THE PANELS also has a post on crazy Christmas covers, Chris Sims at COMICS ALLIANCE lists DC Comics Best Holiday Specials ( including THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD issue 148, which I already covered in this post ), Graeme McMillan over at THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER enlightens you with 10 Underrated Christmas Comics and another post by Chris Sims compares the different holiday mythologies of the DC and the Marvel universe.


One of the things the last post mentions is that in the DC universe there is no clear rule if Santa Claus really exists or not and it rather depends on the kind of story that they are trying to tell. When Dan Jurgens wrote the Superman books he did a story in which Superman spends one day each Christmas answering requests and pleas for help. The story was called Metropolis Mailbag and there even was a follow up during the World without Superman storyline in which the other heroes tried to uphold the tradition. Now in these stories Superman or the other heroes often had to deny most of the requests because it was not in their power and they couldn´t ask Santa for help because Santa obviously did not exist in the post Crisis DC universe. In the pre Crisis DC universe Superman even met Santa Claus twice,  once in the Golden Age in SUPERMAN`S CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE 1 and once in the Bronze Age in DC COMICS PRESENTS 67 .


Next up are posts that cover one particular Christmas comic or story : SUPERMAN 165 , DC SPECIAL SERIES 21 , the aforementioned FLASH 73 which is where I found some of the art for the post, GLX - MAS SPECIAL 1 , COMICO CHRISTMAS SPECIAL 1 , THE BEANO CHRISTMAS SPECIAL , just for my pal Terry Hooper and ACTION CHRISTMAS 1 which is where I found the picture for the beginning of the post. Thanks and kudos to all of you.


One of the things I like on the Flash tv show is how they introduce characters and how they pay homage to the comics. If you haven´t seen the second season you should not watch this but since Jay Garrick is in the first Christmas story of this post here is the Flash of Two Worlds.



Here´s a Christmas clip for the more adult audience of the blog.



Today´s musical video is the CMA Country Christmas show from 2014 as I always try to post more music that is not usually played on german radio. I wanted to post the show from this year but the account was cancelled.



I only mentioned Frank Miller briefly but I still want to post this docu because I don´t think my next DAREDEVIL post will include him.



To close things here´s the Flash cartoon with Barry Allen and Wally West.



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Just when I was ready to start on my post about the " Craziest Christmas Comic Covers " I came across some pages from Jim Aparo´s excellent Outsiders books BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS and THE OUTSIDERS which included three Christmas issues I wanted to include in my last post. Oy.


I thought about just adding this to the old post but then I decided against it because I want to do shorter posts. Which might not be possible since it´s one of my all time favorite series by Jim Aparo we are talking about.

Longtime readers are probably already sick and tired of hearing me go on how great this series was and what a shame it is that still nothing of this is collected in a nice hardcover or omnibus like the NEW TEEN TITANS BY GEORGE PEREZ. Okay, maybe the binding on these books is suboptimal but at least the printing is all right and the pages look just gorgeous in the bigger format. Speaking about those omnibus books I may be one of the few whose favorite issue of vol 2 is BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS 5 which was included because it was a crossover with NEW TEEN TITANS 37.


You want to know how much I love this issue ? I love it so much that I have multiple issues of the original version, I got the german version in BATMAN SONDERHEFT 35 and I´m probably going to buy it again when I buy the SHOWCASE PRESENTS : BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS trade which for some strange reason still is not part of my Jim Aparo comic collection.

Now I could go on a whole rant about this issue but since this post is about the Christmas issues from the series I´ll just let Mathew Peterson from MAJOR SPOILERS back me up with his Retro Review of the issue.


Now the first Christmas issue is BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS 8 in which the Phantom Stranger teams up with Batman and the Outsiders to battle an old enemy. Sadly I haven´t read the issue or don´t remember reading it and maybe it was not translated to german because it involves evil demonic superbabies. I´m not kidding. If you don´t believe me just read the entry on THE PHANTOM STRANGER homepage. In any case it´s nice to see Jim Aparo draw one of his signature heroes again although this would not be the last time he drew him. That was in the Neil Gaiman penned prestige comic GREEN LANTERN : THE LEGEND OF THE GREEN FLAME which was supposed to be the version of Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow ? which lay in storage at DC for decades because of some minor continuity inconsistencies. I know, it´s ridiculous when you look at it now because DC has turned into one giant continuity inconsistency.


The second Christmas story from that series is issue 19 ( where Geo - Force goes up against Superman and wipes the floor with him ) because The Battler was so kind to put the entire issue online at SAVAGE TALES.


So thanks for the scans which have made this part of the post possible. Now in the issue ..... say what ? Did I just say that Geo - Force wipes the floor with Superman ? Okay, maybe he doesn´t win in the end but .... okay, I think we should start at the beginning of our little Christmas tale.


At this time the Outsiders already knew THE Batman´s secret identity and yes, this story takes place when it was THE Batman not just simply the Batman. I guess DC was trying to make him more mysterious. I love this. Anyway, Halo starts telling Bruce Wayne why Geo - Force is probably going to do something he´s going to regret and we get a nice scene of Halo and Brion preparing for Christmas when Brion whips out a present for Halo.


Now to set the next page up you must know that Halo and Brion both had feelings for each other but they were still struggling with that and had also not talked about this. Oh, and Brion´s sister Tara had died in The Judas Contract although the Teen Titans didn´t tell Brion the whole truth about that ( which was rather unusual at that time ). He thinks she died a hero´s death. Anyway, Mike W. Barr shows once again that he can write compelling characters which was one of the great pulls of the series.


So Halo tries calling Katana who is not answering the call.Katana had become like a surrogate mother to Halo but at this point Halo has found her real parents and Katana thinks it´s better to keep her distance and let Halo celebrate Christmas with her parents so she can get re- aquainted with them ( when Halo joins the team she suffers from amnesia ).


And I have to agree with Black Lightning, that´s bull. That´s the same kind of bs like when the X - Men thought the other x - teams were better off thinking them dead. The relationship between Tatsu and Gabrielle is a really powerful connection and it´s one of the main reasons why this book is so well written as Mike W Barr excels at the funny scenes that occur 


with the same seemingly effortless ease as the more serious moments.


Speaking about Black Lightning he was one character that this series dusted off again and deservedly so. I don´t want to go into the whole topic how underrepresented afro - american superheroes were at that time ( though I love the fact that in one comic book he said that his reason for calling himself BLACK Lightning was just so people made no mistake and knew he was a brother ) - and still are - but he was one cool cat. If always pictured him as kind of a Sidney Poitier type and I have to disagree with Michael Carlyle on THE CRAPBOX OF SON OF CTHULHU in his review of THE OUTSIDERS 1. I loved his Saturday Night Fever disco look with the puffed sleeves, the open chest and the fly wing collar.  


But back to our story in progress. Brion gets a call from a friend who overdosed on sleeping pills and he and Halo rush off to save her.


They arrive in time to save her and before she´s taken to the hospital Brion learns that she did it because one of her teachers blackmailed her into having sex with him. So Brian goes to kill the guy and the Batman enlists the aid of one of the few heroes who can stop him. You know, this is pretty heavy stuff for what some people still consider kids stuff and I remember the days when Batman and Superman were actual friends and he could just contact him when Batman needed Superman´s help fondly. 


Superman arrives much to Halo´s delight who is the wide eyed, naiive teenager of the group who´s still impressed when she teams up with somebody like Superman. Now this was written in March 1985 so when somebody tells that the whole approach to superheroes in the new MS MARVEL series is so innovative and refreshing and totally new - sorry, you have not be reading comics long enough. Mike W Barr did it much better here and it was not a new concept back then. So just because you add religion and social media doesn´t mean you´re breaking new ground here.


Meanwhile Geo Force is confronting the slimeball teacher at a skiing lodge and is all ready to bash his head in when Superman intervenes. But Geo Force is too ticked off to listen to reason so he let´s Superman have it. 


Which turns out to be not such a great idea after all. Oooouuuuwwch !


While Geo Force and Superman tussle we have a quick interlude with Rex Mason and Sapphire doing some last minute Christmas shopping that shows what a forgiving character he can be. Even though Sapphire´s father tried to kill him he doesn´t want her to build walls between her father because he´s the only family she has. And it´s Christmas, right ?


We cut back to the fight which goes much better for Geo Force since he realized that Superman owes a great part of his powers to Earth´s lower gravity. And guess who controls gravity ? It´s on ! And Superman and Geo Force are debating the pros and cons of vigilantism while duking it out.


Yup back then heroes were really good at multitasking and you didn´t have all this bloody realism. Anyway, it dawns on Superman that he is going to loose this fight if he doesn´t find a way to stop Geo Force so he causes an avalanche, the old cheater. Geo Force totally had his number.


Superman and Geo Force return to the skiing lodge where the teacher tries to weasel out of the rapist accusations but THE Batman arrives and he has been busy finding other victims who are willing to testify. While some may find this resolution cheesy and a bit naiive I find it interesting that probably nobody realizes that THE Batman just used Superman as a diversion so he can do his detective thing and be the great hero in the end. That´s kind of in character for a guy who dresses up a little orphan boy in bright colors as a bullet trap for gangsters. Superman was just used as Geo Force´s punching ball although he doesn´t seem to mind.


With all the strings tied up neatly we get the Happy End that befits every good Christmas story with Brion paying his friend in the hospital a visit.


Did I say all the strings are tied up neatly ? That´s not entirely true as we get one more page that foreshadows the events of the next issue where we will find out more about Halo´s past. And not all of it will be pleasant.


I know there are people out there who thought it was a brilliant idea when Peter David revealed in his SUPERGIRL series that the Linda Danvers Supergirl had merged with had not been a nice person or when Logan finally regained his memories only to find out he had been pretty much a giant a$$hole for most of his life but again - it´s been done before, guys.

All in all I found this issue highly enjoyable and I probably have to read it in the SHOWCASE edition as DC will not put out any hardcover editions from this anytime soon. Which I find a bit strange since you can read all the issues in electronic form and did they not have to polish them up to make them available this way ? I mean that´s one of the reasons why Marvel does so many omnibus editions. If you make the issues available in electronic form you have already done all the work necessary to do a hardcover edition, it´s already been recolored and ready for printing.

Be that as it may before I have to end this post I have to mention THE OUTSIDERS 5 which is Mike W Barr and Jim Aparo´s third Christmas issue involving the Outsiders. But not Batman who had at this point left the team. Sadly I couldn´t find much on the issue but it´s basically a retelling of Charles Dickens´ A Christmas Carol where the team dresses up as the ghosts of Christmas to get information from a mob bookkeeper whose name is Eben and who had a partner called Morley. It´s not very original but the fun part of it is to see Geo Force as Morley´s ghost come to haunt Eben, Halo as the ghost of Christmas past, Metamorpho as the ghost of Christmas present and Black Lightning as the ghost of Christmas to come.


So this is the end of this post but not the end of the Christmas themed posts as I have to at least do the post I initially wanted to do Today.


There will also be another big Jim Aparo post coming up in 2016 but in the meantime here are a few links beside the ones I put in the post.

COMIC BOOK RESOURCES has two entries on Jim Aparo ( well, they probably have dozens of them but these are the two I came across Today ) in Day 21 of their Year of the Artist series and as the greatest Batman artist after Neal Adams , WEDNESDAY`S HAUL has an Outsiders cover by Jim Aparo for AMAZING HEROES 78, Mathew Peterson at MAJOR SPOILERS ( again ) offers the extremely long Hero History of Black Lightning , the SECRET ORIGINS PODCAST has an episode on issue 10 that has some nice art by Jim Aparo and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez from the issue that had four different origins for the Phantom Stranger, BABBLINGS ABOUT DC COMICS has a whole slew of entries on Walter Simonson´s classic MANHUNTER series and last but not least Penelopecat at SINISTER URGE gives a raving review of LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT : ALAN DAVIS Volume One.  


Since this is still kind of a Christmas post here is the first of two videos I didn´t want to post during the holidays. But since I put the Ms Claus stripper contest in my last post I think it´s okay to post Sara X´s video.



The same goes for the 24 Days of Elves video ( which I found at Terry Hooper´s COMIC BITS ONLINE ) since there are probably some people who have already enough of all the sweet and sickening Christmas cheer.



Because Superman was in this post here is a nice video where the latest version. Henry Cavill, meets the gold standard : Christopher Reeve.



Again I managed to name drop Neil Gaiman so here´s another video with him. And no, I still haven´t had time to read the GRAVEYARD BOOK comic.



Originally I wanted to post the DISCWORLD - WYRD SISTERS video since I always associate Terry Pratchett´s movies with Christmas ever since watching the brilliant HOGFATHER. But since the embedding on that was disabled here is a Doctor Who anime since there´s also this connection of Doctor Who and Christmas. And no, I also haven´t seen the Doctor Who Christmas Special The Husband Of River Song yet but I will do that Today.



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Justice, like lightning, should ever appear to some people hope, and to other men fear !

So this will be the last post - at least this year - and while I had a few ideas how to make this a special post I decided to do one of these posts where I include everything but the kitchen sink, starting at one point and see where we end up on this day where we unite with friends and family to say goodbye and hello at the same time. And hopefully drink a lot.


2015 has not been an easy year, to put it mildly, in comics and personally and while it still feels a bit early to do an informed resume I have to say that things have improved a bit on TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN.

Though I have been out of commission for a few months due to my knee surgery and the subsequent rehab sojourning where I had no internet access I managed to do 93 posts this year which is the highest number of posts in a year since this blog´s inception in 2006. And speaking about 2006, this year will be the blog´s tenth year anniversary on April, the 11th. We´ll see what kind of post I´ll do on that special occasion. Maybe I´ll do another " best of the best " posts since I did the last roundup of that sort at the anniversary in 2014 and there are many posts - maybe too many - that deserve to be included in that category. Making that selection of deserving posts will be no easy task though because not only did I write over 150 new posts since then I also feel that the overall quality of the posts has increased with more videos, links, bigger pictures, them being longer and animated GIFs added even if that can lead to longer loading times at some point. Now part of this assembly of excellence are going to be without any doubt the new additions to the cult sirens section ( which includes many new solo posts but also the casting call for the Justice League of America movie where I still have to do the last post with the alternates ) much to the chagrin of some readers. I know that some readers would prefer it if this was a comics - only blog but there are others who like those posts and you never know how people will discover the blog. And while my motto is not " come for the boobs, stay for the comics " I can´t deny that these posts get more comments than usual.


I tried to do two separate blogs in the past and that didn´t work out. So if you were hoping to see the end to all that boobage I have to inform you that I will continue these posts in 2016 especially since I have now a lot more where I can just re - post the old posts with some new added stuff.

But fear not comic fans there will be still enough comic related posts for you to read. I hope to continue the series I started like DEATH IN COMICS, INFERNO CROSSOVERS and the SECRET WARS II crossovers, John Romita Jr´s DAREDEVIL run, Marc Silvestri´s UNCANNY X - MEN run, 90s comics and REMEMBERING ERIC MASTERSON but I hope I can also do some posts about current comics. I don´t want people to get the wrong impression, that I´m an old fart who only reads old Bronze Age comics and scoffs at all the new comics that come out ( well the" old fart "bit is true and also that I read a lot of Bronze Age comics ) so I will try to write more about new comics even if this seriously endangers my mission statement to concentrate on being positive about comics. My brother had the glorious idea that I should try how long I can post without writing about Marvel or DC but while it´s true that they have enough money to do their own promotion they also tend to be overly optimistic with their own product.

So while they still don´t send me any review copies I will neither try to score points with my readers by bashing DC or Marvel nor try to deny their existence. I will probably still write about the comics I find great ( since I have just gotten DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS : BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS and SUPERMAN - THE MAN OF STEEL 5 as a late Christmas present to myself and have cashed in my other Christmas gift, an amazon gift certificate to pre - order the AVENGERS BY JOHN BYRNE OMNIBUS which contains John Byrne´s run on WEST COAST AVENGERS / AVENGERS: WEST COAST ) but also about those collections where they fumbled the ball.   


That said, I did an " independent comics / non Marvel or DC comics " month before and if there is enough reader interest in that I might give it another go. Especially since there are more of these books in my monthly comic reading stack and the number of posts a month have increased.


And speaking about my comic reading stack, this year I have added quite a lot of new hardcovers to that including some omnibus books and I will try to read these before buying new comics. As always money is tight and while I can´t afford to pass on the occasional bargain book at amazon or my seriously shrunk pull list ( I already missed two issues of ASTRO CITY so I´m thinking of making the switch from single issues to hardbacks ) it may be a good idea to read the comics I have before getting too much new stuff. There are still a few series which I intend to complete and re - read and now that the FANTASY STRONGHOLD has moved into the AIGNER bookstore in Ludwigsburg I will also get the occasional comic book there.

Another new series I hope to start next year will be about the famous Hammer movies since I already did all the necessary GIFs in advance.


Since I mentioned posts where I already prepared stuff for I will probably continue on this blog with the oddest Christmas comic covers I found although I will probably have to split ti into two separate posts : one with the really weird ones and the ones where you either never knew they had a special Christmas issue or where you didn´t know the series existed. 


And another one about Christmas issues of science fiction comics which is not a connection you normally make. Unless you´re from the UK where Christmas and science fiction go hand in hand because of all the Doctor Who Christmas specials and 2000 AD which also has a few issues about that topic like issue 450 with an Alan Davis wraparound cover. Most websites only have the front but I managed to find the complete cover.


And speaking about wraparound covers, some readers might remember that I posted this SUPERMAN / BATMAN comic cover by Jim Aparo.


Well, I have found the comic in question which was not a comic done exclusively for the german market like I first suspected but the cover to WORLD`S FINEST issue 255. Here is the original art for that cover.


Here is the colored version from the GCD website and you can find a bigger size at THE WORLD`S FINEST BLOG which has posts on this and other warparound cover issues like 253 , 254, 256 , 257 and 258 . 


I also hope to post more wraparound covers and original art in 2016. Last but not least there are the cosplay posts I have discontinued and who knows - maybe I´ll even get to finally do my big Yaya Han post after all.


So the clock is ticking down the final minutes of 2015 and it´s once again time to wrap things up and prepare the grapes. Here´s hoping 2016 will be better than 2015, good luck, health and lots of love and comics !


So what are you looking forward to in 2016 ? I have to say for me it´s not so much movies and more television. There are the usual suspects like THE BLACKLIST, SLEEPY HOLLOW, Marvel´s AGENTS OF SHIELD, and DC´s series iZOMBIE and ARROW that I follow but what really has me on the seat of my pants is when they are going to continue with THE FLASH ?



You can´t end the year without posting at least one more video of sexy Yaya Han cosplaying as Chun Li. At least I can´t. Enjoy this one, guys !



So this year is now officially over and the new one has just begun which means it´s time to party down. And if you need a new party game .....



Coming from people with a microphone faking it to people keeping it real here´s another casting video, this time from BRITAIN`S GOT TALENT.



And to end this post in style here´s The Muppets All Star Comedy Gala.



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As promised I´m starting the new year with a review of a more recent comic, in this case ULTRON FOREVER, written by Al Ewing and drawn by Alan Davis and the review will be just full of all kinds of spoilers.


Ever since Marvel NOW started the Marvel section of my pull list has shrunk each month until it´s currently at zero. There are two trades I have to get, the second SILVER SURFER by Mike Allred and Mark Waid´s DAREDEVIL finale The autobiography of Matt Murdock but aside from a select few by favorite artists my reading falls between the 80s and 90s.


One of these artists is Carlos Pacheco ( we will talk more about him in a moment ) and another one is Alan Davis. While I would like to say that I was a fan of him from day one the truth is that when I saw my first pages of Alan Davis art - I hated it. Yep, I remember that I had just bought BATMAN TASCHENBUCH 29 which - among other stories - contained The Truth about Halo a three part story originally published in BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS issues 16, 20 and 22. Those pocket books usually had stories about a certain topic so it was not unheard of that they skipped some issues which would be put into a later volume which sometimes lead to strange continuity glitches. So I was reading the story, happy as a clam, when I came to the third part which was not drawn by Jim Aparo.


Because he left the title with issue 20 to do THE OUTSIDERS which was printed on Baxter paper while Alan Davis came on board. Here is where it gets a bit complicated but since I already explained it in detail in this post I´m going to skip that part. Suffice it to say that I wanted my Outsiders comics drawn by Jim Aparo but since the new Baxter title never actually made it to Germany I was not happy at all. It would take a few years until I discovered the later Outsiders issue in Spain where I liked the art more.


I think I have probably read most of his comics since then and it´s only in recent years that I have skipped series he worked on entirely like his WOLVERINE issues because there was also another artist in that story and Alan Davis´ art looked a bit rushed and uninspired to out it mildly. You can always tell when he really likes a story like in DC´s THE NAIL or Marvel´s FANTASTIC FOUR - THE END. In WOLVERINE he wasn´t very inspired but who could be by another story of Wolverine loosing his healing factor ?


So Alan Davis´ art has been hit or miss in the last years and if you want to see what he´s really capable of check out his absolutely glorious work on AVENGERS PRIME. My advice : get the Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis : Heroic Age hardcover which contains AVENGERS PRIME and the first six issues of AVENGERS by John Romita Jr and NEW AVENGERS by Stuart Immomen. It´s a 40 dollar book but you can get it at amazon for around 25 which is the price for any of these three hardcovers separately. 


But back to ULTRON FOREVER. While Alan Davis´ is not operating on the same level as in AVENGERS PRIME his kung fu is very strong and my only complaint here is that RAGE OF ULTRON got the hardcover treatment instead of this. I haven´t read it but if I had to choose between Jerome Opena and Alan Davis ? That´s no contest. Alan Davis wins hands down.


So the art here alone is totally worth the price of admission. What about the story ? Okay, I tried to like it but there are a few small hurdles here.

First of all by calling the story ULTRON FOREVER and have an Avengers team from different time periods unite against a common thread you just set yourself up for a tough road because naturally comic fans will compare this to AVENGERS FOREVER which is THE best Avengers series with time traveling Avengers drawn by Carlos Pacheco at the height of his game.


I mean, even IF Al Ewing and Alan Davis were at the same level as Kurt Busiek, Roger Stern and Carlos Pacheco I doubt that they could accomplish what the creative team of AVENGERS FOREVER did in 12 issues in 3.


So while I can understand that some exec at Disney probably thought it was a good idea to " brand " this comic so new readers would immediately know that it´s a story similar to AVENGERS FOREVER ( assuming they even read that ) they also shoot themselves in the foot at the same time.

The second problem is that everybody knows that this - along with a few other Ultron related comics and reprints - was timed to come out at the same time as the movie AVENGERS - AGE OF ULTRON to prevent the few moviegoers who actually set foot in a comic shop after having seen the movie to buy the actual AGE OF ULTRON comic. Which is a smart idea because AGE OF ULTRON was not a good comic. So I was really happy that the movie had nothing to do with the comic. The biggest problem with that comic was that in spite of the grand title there was not really a lot of Ultron in Age of Ultron and a more fitting title would have been What the Avengers did during the Age of Ultron which does NOT include fighting Ultron. A bit long but more fitting. In that regard ULTRON FOREVER manages to get higher scores because there is actually a lot of Ultron.  


There is one last minor nitpicking ( well, there are a few more down the line but I´m talking about the overall premise of the comic here ) which is that I´m sure that the idea of the guys at Disney was to do the ultimate Ultron story ( no pun intended ) and in my opinion they set themselves up for another disappointment because that was already done by Kurt Busiek and George Perez during their AVENGERS run with Ultron Unlimited.


So based on that I would recommend ULTRON FOREVER to newer comic readers who don´t have read all these AVENGERS comics and won´t compare it to those masterworks and rather judge it on its own merit.


Which this story has. The selection of Avengers is actually interesting even if writer Al Ewing had to pander to the Disney people by including the new female Thor and Alan Davis had to draw an ugly and unnecessarily complicated costume for the Vision to make the greedy movie guys happy.


On the other side he gets to draw Black Widow in the classic skintight black costume doing her stuff. Which makes Subzero all kinds of happy. 


The inclusion of the new female Thor even leads to a kind of meta scene - unwillingly or not by writer Al Ewing - where she is confronted with the real deal original Walter Simonson Thor ( or rather Sal Buscema Thor as he had taken over penciling when he got his brand new armor ) and is unable to tell Thor the real reason why she has the hammer. I mean, how CAN you try to explain that mind - f - word the writers are currently doing on THOR to the authentic thunder god ? " Well, you see, an alien dude whispered something into your ear so they gave the job to a woman. " 


Yeah, I know it´s more complicated than that but the more you go into detail the worse it gets. So back to the story in ULTRON FOREVER.

The Avengers are summoned from different time periods by none other than Doctor Doom which is like the Daleks asking Doctor Who for help.


You know it´s not going to end well. So - spoilers - when Doctor Doom betrays the Avengers it´s not that big of a surprise. I mean, come on, that´s probably in his job description. The only thing that makes it reasonable that the Avengers agree to help Doom ( or rather follow his plan to be used and disposed as cannon fodder because let´s be real - that´s all anybody is to Doom ) is that they figure that Ultron is worse. And that they can defeat Doctor Doom when - not if - he betrays them.


Speaking about defeating bad guys another thing that is sort of anti - climatic is the way in which Ultron is defeated. Even if we assume for a moment that it is possible for him to get Odin´s powers ( Al Ewing obviously thinks magic and technology are the same and Ultron is the Super Adaptoid ) it´s contradictory that in one moment he is powerful enough to just brush TWO Mjölnirs aside as if he was swatting flies


and in the next one he gets blown away by banging them together.


They didn´t even need the whole team for that. My mother would probably say : " Well, why didn´t they start with this in the first place ? "

Instead of collecting an entire team of Avengers wouldn´t it have been easier to just get the two Thors ? Maybe, but vanquishing Ultron is not Doctor Doom´s only agenda so this actually makes sense in the story. So I counted on Doctor Doom pulling a fast one over the Avengers but what I didn´t expect was how the Avengers beat him. The Vision talks him out of it. Which is preferable to solving everything with violence - at least in the real world. In comic books not so much especially since Al Ewing brings in a character from the AVENGERS A I series that not that many readers will be familiar with. In that regard the resolution reads a bit like all those Agatha Christie crime novels where there is a surprise revelation at the last minute that comes totally out of left field. I don´t know if that was mandated from above to get people to read the AVENGERS A I series but it feels like a cop out. Also I never took Doctor Victor Von Doom as such a redeemable character. Although his huge ego will always be his downfall.


Now after reading all of this you might get the idea that I didn´t like the comic but that is not true. Like I said, this is just some minor nitpicking in some places because I´m old school and think that with a few changes here and there this could have been better. Besides that I have to applaud Al Ewing for managing to make something good of the horrific Johnathan Hickman run by incorporating one of the futures the Avenger members encountered during their aimless travel through time. This wibbly wobbly timey wimey adventure makes much more sense than that entire run.


The new incarnation of Captain America was kind of interesting ( of course she has to be black ) even though it would have been enough if she said " I AM THE SHIELD ! " once. No need to keep repeating it. 


Speaking about black characters it was kind of nice to see that not everybody had forgotten about the time when Jim Rhodes was Iron Man.


Okay, because of the suit you can´t see that this Iron Man is actually a brother but Rhodey gets more to do than just be the token black guy on this Avengers team and shows that he also knows how to use his brain.


And although I would have preferred to see him in the Silver Centurion armor classic Iron Man still looks good. As does Thor in his armor. While I have to say I do not agree one hundred percent with his depiction of Ultron he has done his homework about the various time periods he snatched the Avengers from which is not as random as one might think.


Having a Thor who can´t die because of Hela´s curse is a tactical plus


as is a Hulk whose transformations have become so unpredictable he can grow a second head after being decapitated by Captain America´s shield.


So even if the story could have benefit from more issues - and maybe less deadline pressure - it is a story that is fun, exciting, old school but also readable for modern audiences and even though the ending feels a bit optimistic you don´t want to end such an entertaining story on a downer.


I have to admit that even the female Thor was not as obnoxious as I feared she would be because Al Ewing managed not to beat it into the reader how cool and oh so important she is - unlike the rest of Disney.


And Alan Davis really kills it with the cosmic stuff like " UltrOdin ".


So my final verdict is that this may not be the next AVENGERS FOREVER or ULTRON UNLIMITED but - to paraphrase from Geoff Johns when he was good - it doesn´t have to be. It´s it own thing with captivating art by Alan Davis and the way things are going at Marvel right now this will probably be the best Avengers story you will read in a very long time.


One final bonus I have to mention is that 3 issues of old Marvel comics are included in the trade to let newer readers in to when Hulk had his strange transformations, Jim Rhodes got mysterious headaches when wearing the Iron Man armor and when Thor got the armor he wears here. Back in the old days Marvel was capable of just putting three issues in a trade like with THOR - ALONE AGAINST THE CELESTIALS but Today they are so fixated on the six issue trade that they have to put in padding.


Although this is padding on a high level and just might get readers who are unfamiliar with those time periods want to read them. Of course the THOR issue has the new coloring that almost completely overpowers Sal Buscema´s fabulous art but I guess that is what they are pushing now.


Time to wrap things up for Today - especially since my internet connection keeps breaking up - but not without including some links and videos.

First there are some additional reviews on COMIC CLARITY which covers all issues ( 1 / 2 / 3 ) - with heavy spoilers ! - and David Goodman at FANSIDED has also reviews on part one and part two of the story. There may even be a review of the third part but since he didn´t add any labels or tags I couldn´t find it. I also included a lot of pictures in the post some of which were provided by SCANS DAILY which has a preview for Avengers - Ultron Forever as well as lots of pictures from Avengers - Ultron Forever , New Avengers - Ultron Forever and Uncanny Avengers - Ultron Forever . There are also posts on Al Ewing and Alan Davis´ new two parter Captain Britain and the Mighty Defenders ( issue 1 / issues 1 and 2 / issue 2 ).


There´s also a post about Doug Ramsey that includes some wonderful EXCALIBUR pages and posts on NEW MUTANTS ANNUAL 2 and 3 .


Today´s post was as long as Yesterday´s post was short. We start the video section with an episode of iFanboy that is all about Alan Davis.



It took me quite a while to find the bookmark for this one which is one of the few cosplay videos that not only has Yaya Han or just cosplay girls.



To start the year in style Today´s music video is a mini concert with Suzanne Vega who released a new album last year in January.



All things must end : here´s the last Melina Pendulum video.



The first cartoon of the year is a classic one : ALITA, BATTLE ANGEL. It´s also one of the best manga series that was so popular that it returned with an alternate story line. Sorry, I only found the spanish video.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Originally I wanted to continue with the Christmas cover posts but since I can´t stop writing about Jim Aparo - even when I´m doing a post on Alan Davis - I thought why trying to avoid it and instead just go with the flow ?


Especially since I´m almost finished with reading the DC SHOWCASE PRESENTS : BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS trade. I started reading it after being halfway through the ESSENTIAL POWER MAN 2 which took me over a week. In other posts I have said that buying the ESSENTIALS is always a good investment but I´m also glad that I didn´t buy the first volume.

Don´t get me wrong, I was very curious to read the issues but after I did I have to say that one reason why the POWER MAN & IRON FIST series is so revered is that both solo series benefit immensely from the merger and POWER MAN even more than IRON FIST. The art on POWER MAN is not very consistent and the writing is what I would call dated. There is a lot of social commentary in it and while I can acknowledge that Marvel´s writer were trying to bring social issues into the comics - and I guess a comic with an urban setting like POWER MAN is predestined for that - at times the text in the caption boxes has nothing to do with the story and even distracts from it. But I´m not trying to do a review of POWER MAN here. What I wanted to point out is that while BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS is not a new comic it still holds up to Today´s reading standards which is in no small part thanks to Jim Aparo´s timeless art. The stories could as well take place Today judging from the buildings, cars and clothing.  


Speaking about the SHOWCASE of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS I found out that the material from that was used for the reprint of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS 5 in the NEW TEEN TITANS BY GEORGE PEREZ omnibus.

In my post Christmas with Batman and the Outsiders I posted the splash page for that issue and you may notice that it say in the first caption box " Are you in luck ! For only 75 c, you have a ringside seat for the deaths of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS and THE NEW TEEN TITANS. "Well, in the DC SHOWCASE of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS that was changed to 16.95 $ because that is the price of the trade. Originally it was 75 cents because that was the price of comic books when the issue came out but somebody thought it better to change it to 16.95 $ either as a little in - joke or because he thought it would make more sense. Anyway, in the omnibus they either forgot to change it again or they thought that " for only 75 $ " sounded like they were making fun of the readers who had paid that much for the book. In any case it´s an interesting bit of comic trivia.

But Today I don´t want to talk too much about Jim Aparo´s BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS. Much rather I want to talk about THE BEST OF DC, a series I stumbled upon while looking for a better scan of this cover.


Or better yet, I stumbled upon AGAIN. You see, my brain is more like a sieve lately because I totally forgot that not only did I read about THE BEST OF DC in issue 76 of TwoMorrows Publishing´s BACK ISSUE they also had a feature on the Super Juniors in that same issue by comic writer / pop culture historian Andy Mangels who contributed to a lot of issues .


Like all issues BACK ISSUE 76 has a theme which is Let´s Get Small so they feature comics about small characters like Ant - Man and the Wasp, Gold Key´s Microbots, The Atom in the Bronze Age and Sword of the Atom and of course Micronauts but also on THE BEST OF DC which was a digest sized reprint series that started in 1979 and went on until April 1986. 


The price of these was between 95 cents and 1.50 dollars ( on the last issues ) and the page count was somewhere between 100 and 150 pages for most of the issues. I´m not sure but I think this may have been the source for a lot of the pocket books Ehapa published in Germany because a lot of them have similar covers like this one by the great Ross Andru.


And most of the material can be found in SUPERMAN TASCHENBUCH 31.


One of these days I really have to do a post on Ross Andru. Not only did he draw Spider - Man when that series returned to german comic readers thanks to Condor of which I just got another MARVEL MASTERWORKS.


At DC I can´t even mention all the stuff he did but he was the artist on WONDER WOMAN for nine years and THE FLASH for three, drew a ton of covers when he returned as an editor in 1978 and together with Robert Kanigher he created the METAL MEN of which he drew the first 29 issues. 


Back to THE BEST OF DC, they have issues dedicated to TEEN TITANS


the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA ( what a great cover by George Perez )


the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA


and more than a half dozen featuring THE LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES which was one of the really big sellers with comic readers back then.


There are also Christmas related anthologies


and a whole slew of YEARS BEST COMIC STORIES.


Coming back to Jim Aparo, while he only provided the two covers I posted above on those issues THE BEST OF DC 69 reprinted BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS 29 and issue 9 reprinted the entire BAT MURDERER epic.


So far I haven´t seen any issues from THE BEST OF DC anywhere so I guess they are pretty rare and pricey. I would really like to get my hands on some issues not only because they contain some material that´s hard or impossible to find now but I´m also curious how they compare to the pocket books I know in regards to printing and production quality.


And since I mentioned TwoMorrows Publishing´s BACK ISSUE I wanted to add that I just got issue 85 all about Christmas in the Bronze Age.

For more about Ross Andru you can check out his entry on wikipedia and comicbook db , COMIC BOOK RESOURCES article about Underappreciated Artist Ross Andru , COMICS ALLIANCE´s tribute to Ross Andru , our pal Steve W at STEVE DOES COMICS confesses that his favorite Spider - Man era was the one drawn by Ross Andru and takes a look at Ross Andru´s SUPERMAN VS THE AMAZING SPIDER - MAN , Old Groove at DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND website has three posts on his Amazing Spider - Man splash pages ( part 1 / part 2 / part 3 ) and there´s 20TH CENTURY DANNYBOY´s great post on the Ross Andru & Mike Esposito art team . 


There are always some Jim Aparo links I haven´t posted yet but since you never know when you can find the time for another post here is a small selection. ART & ARTIFICE has a post on Jim Aparo with a lot of links , BLOG INTO MYSTERY features the seminal A Death in The Family, SCANS DAILY has a post on BATMAN 416 - the first meeting of Dick Grayson and Jason Todd and DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND once again provides complete Jim Aparo stories with The Phantom Crew from GHOSTLY TALES 65 and Bat - Murderer ! from DETECTIVE COMICS 444. That classic story is also the topic of this post on COMIC BOOK BRAIN and for more info go to this post at BARE.BONES e-ZINE which takes a look at all Batman books published from January to March 1975. And last but not least BRONZE AGE BLOG offers Warrior in a Wheelchair from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 100 and The Corpse That Wouldn´t Die from THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD 115.


Also check out DIGEST COMICS to learn more about DC´s digest reprints.


Since this post was all about pocket books we start the video section with a musical video that shows that the best things come in small packages.



It seems that I have to watch JESSICA JONES after all since David Tennant is going to play the Purple Man. Man, is he busy after DOCTOR WHO or what ? So he´s got BROADCHURCH which is in its second season, he was on the american remake of that called GRACEPOINT which was cancelled after the first season ( this article looks at what might be the reason for it but in my opinion the americans just change too much to make it succcessful with american audiences and when you compare it to the original series there is not much left from it like with LOS MISTERIOS DE LAURA and THE MYSTERIES OF LAURA ) and now he´s on JESSICA JONES.



With all the videos I posted about DOCTOR WHO I can´t believe that I never posted something about the spanish tv show EL MINISTERIO DEL TIEMPO ( The Ministry of Time ). This is what german tv will never be able to achieve and what TORCHWOOD could have been if they had any cojones. Here is the trailer for the second season which is probably going to be more awesome than season one. You can also find the episodes of season one on YouTube but they are in spanish and because of the length ( at least one hour ) the quality is rather bad. Nevertheless here is the link for the first episode from season one and I just hope the americans never get their hands on this because you know they would f - word that up bad.



Since Ghibli studio founder Hayao Miyazaki celebrates his 75th birthday on this day here are the Top Ten Anime Movies which include 5 of his masterpieces. If you haven´t seen them you are only depriving yourself.



From animes to another of Today´s juvenile delinquents favorite past times : video games. I knew that the DEAD OR ALIVE series was more famous for the bouncing action of the female characters but so far I hadn´t seen anything from the game. Well, I came across a few videos some days ago - which explains what I have been doing between posts - and I have to say I had no idea. My favorite character is Lisa - who was clearly modeled after cinema sexbomb Halle Berry - and at first I thought my favorite outfit was the gold swimsuit. But then I saw the Arthemis, well, it´s not really a swimsuit more dental floss with jewels .... see for yourself, it´s the second outfit in this video from DEAD OR ALIVE 5.



I read that her character was whitewashed in the latest version but for all who want to remember her like she ought to be here´s her lapdance from the second game from the series ( for all those who think maybe only part 5 is full on perverted ). I don´t know about you but I´m just going to put it on full screen and pretend that this is the sexy dance of Halle Berry we should have gotten in THE LAST BOY SCOUT instead of the short strip.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Today I just want to give a quick shout out ( yeah, like that has ever worked before ) to Linda Kozlowski, who celebrates her 58th birthday.


She has left the movie business because of the roles she was offered but back when she was still looking hot she starred in the ever so popular movie series of CROCODILE DUNDEE opposite ex - husband Paul Hogan.


Yeah, leave it to the germans to come up with a subtitle that makes no sense whatsoever. First of all they always have to attach some stupid subtitle to any movie and then it must make absolutely no sense. WTF is " Crocodile Dundee - a kissable crocodile" supposed to mean ? The main character is not a crocodile, that´s just his nickname in the movie, duh.

But let´s get back to celebrity birthday babe Linda Kozlowski. Rather than for her acting abilities she´s most famous for sporting a very revealing swimsuit in the first CROCODILE DUNDEE movie which is still the best.


And I´m not only saying that because of the famous scene in which Linda revealed which incredible ass - ets she had " down under ", so to speak.


Daimn. baby got some serious back ! Man, can you imagine how hot it would have been if she would have starred in one of those rap videos ?

And I´m not talking about some of the lame rap videos that we have Today. Something went terribly wrong with rap videos along the way.

When I saw my first rap videos - and this was way back when Mtv was still playing music videos 24 hours a day - there´d be a song about crossing the street to buy some ice cream and there would be at least a dozen scantily clad, super hot women in it shaking their behinds, dancing very suggestive or outright simulating sexual intercourse or at least oral sex.



Then there was that time when the guys in rap videos would talk about having intercourse and with how many women and the video would be about flowers, ponies and rainbows. Something suggestive like a train going through a tunnel would be the absolute limit. Thankfully this was just a passing trend and we are back to rap videos with plenty of hot babes in it. And just in time to benefit from the whole twerking craze.



But like I said, as wonderful as Miss Kozlowski´s exposed derriere is, the first CROCODILE DUNDEE is a great movie in itself that was nominated for 3 Oscars and 3 Golden Globes of which Paul Hogan won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy / Musical. It also was nominated by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, the BAFTA Awards and won a BMI Film & TV Award and the Goldene Leinwand ( Golden Screen Award ) in 1987.

The sequel wasn´t as good but I want to mention it because the poster that was selected for display in movie theaters was not the first version.


This was the first draft : as you can see the color of Linda´s clothes were changed as to better display her figure and instead of being in the middle of the city Paul Hogan is now towering majestically above the skyline.


All the posters were done by movie poster veteran Dan Gouzee who did hundreds of classic movie posters like the original CLASH OF THE TITANS or the James Bond flicks MOONRAKER  and A VIEW TO A KILL. Especially that last one was very popular in its time ( in great part due to featured model / singer / performance artist Grace Jones ) and I remember that I was just one of the many teenagers who had it mounted on his wall.


He also did the posters for SUPERMAN II and SUPERMAN IV. The first is not so well known because usually they go with the photo movie poster.


For me the new Superman movies were always a big deal and you could read all the latest news in the SUPERMAN BATMAN comics from Ehapa.


There were always some extra stuff in the comics like articles, posters, games or prize competitions, sometimes even cash prizes or tv sets.


Back then I was a semi regular reader which means that I always bought an issue when George Perez or Jose Luis Garcia Lopez did the interior art.
 

Which doesn´t mean that I didn´t buy other issues fnow and then because sometimes I did buy it just because of some crazy story but every time George or Jose Luis did an issue I was all over it. The names of artists were not always given but I think I started noticing that the same names came up in all the stories I especially liked. And I began looking for that around the time when they had started doing that on a regular basis.


Since the name of the title was SUPERMAN BATMAN there was also a lot of Jim Aparo stuff in the books from issues of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD,


BATMAN or DETECTIVE COMICS and everything in between. Although sometimes it´s hard to find out from which series the covers where and I suspect there are some that were exclusively done for the german issues.


Looking at the SUPERMAN II poster I realize that I forgot that Valerie Perrine was in it. That´s one thing they botched in SUPERMAN RETURNS.


Here´s a deleted scene from SUPERMAN with Valerie Perrine :



Many people don´t know it but centerfold Valerie Perrine was also in one of the best known scenes from the first CANNONBALL RUN movie ( I´m not sure who did the movie poster for that one but Dan Gouzee did the poster for the sequel ) and the reason for that is that she´s uncredited.

The most remembered scenes from that movie involve the Lamborghini Babes played by Tara Buckman and cult siren Adrienne Barbeau. I have written about Adrienne before who was in such cult classics like THE FOG, SWAMP THING, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and - arguably - CREEPSHOW.

Now I don´t think I have to explain the Lamborghini Babes whose main trick to avoid getting hassled by the cops is flashing some cleavage.


Which doesn´t work on this cop played by Valerie Perrine.


Here´s a video that includes both Lamborghini Babes scenes :



Speaking about Cannonball Run, one of my pet pevees on this blog is celebrating all the brave actresses who turn unsufferable dreck into bearable entertainment by taking their clothes off or at least show what their Mama gave them and who don´t get enough recognition for that.


Now if you have seen Cannonball Run you will remember the hot waitress with the extra - large double whoppers in the opening scene whose name is not in the opening credits, in the end credits or on any internet page ( and believe me fella, I´ve looked ). Well, just recently I found a clip with some scenes of Farrah Fawcett from the movie and her scene is also in there. So far I just called her The Busenwunder Waitress but now I can tell you that her real name is Vickie Reigle. Now in Germany Vickie is not really a good name for a woman - just ask german singer Nikki who had to suffer a lot of dirty jokes because of her name ( what rhymes with" Nikki ? " ). So to be actually called Vickie - not a good thing in Germany.


There are quite a lot of tangents in this post but before closing the subject of birthday babe Linda Kozlowski for Today I want to include a video with her famous thong swimsuit scene from CROCODILE DUNDEE.



And since you never know when it will be deleted here´s an animated GIF.


Today´s first video is - as kind of an ode to Valerie Perrine - The Monkees with the song of the same name. It´s the remix since that is my favorite.



I always wanted to do a post on HONEY WEST but since I never was sure if it was a comic series based on a tv show or a tv show based on a pulp novel series or a pulp novel series based on a comic I never did a post.


To tell the truth, I´m still not sure but at least I know for sure that there was a tv show with actress Anne Francis. Last year I posted episode one but this year I´m going with episode 3 The Abominable Snowman which is also the name of a Doctor Who serial and a film from bRITAIN´S Hammer Studios starring Peter Cushing to which we may or may not come in my upcoming discussions of the Hammer movies I watched last year.



It´s been a while since I posted a cosplay video but I just had to post this one with Ardella´s Power Girl cosplay . Okay, one reason for that is that she really puts a lot of effort into filling out the costume ( I won´t even pretend that I´m not meaning this literal here, who am I kidding ? ).


The other one is that the optimist in me had hoped that the whole cosplay bashing was a thing of the past but it seems it still continues . Even as someone who has been a comic fan for decades I still have problems with these kind of trench warfare but before I get all exited and launch a long rant I´m posting this link to a video where Ardella explains the real problems with sexy cosplay instead ( which sadly is how other people respond to it ). Be that as it may that should never prevent people from having fun - which is what cosplaying is all about - so here´s the video.



And I couldn´t possibly talk about the problems in the cosplay community without mentioning cosplay ambassador extraordinaire Yaya Han.


I still haven´t given up on doing a post about my favorite costumes by Yaya Han ( like Chun Li ) even if I have problems keeping it professional and not let myself get distracted by her stunning physical attributes.


Nevertheless I have just found too many videos with her I want to post that it´s impossible to cram it all into one post even if I do someday miraculously get around to do it. So here´s one with Yaya as Chun Li.



And speaking about favorite costumes, if Yaya needs any ideas as who to cosplay next how about this one ? Surely she has the body to pull it off !



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Well, while I was making the celebrity birthday post about cult siren Linda Kozlowski I was looking for some new SUPERMAN BATMAN covers to add and I couldn´t help but notice how many of those were done by the great Ross Andru. Because I mentioned him in a post recently I thought why not do a post with some of his most iconic covers from my misspent youth ?


Now some people may be groaning because it´s another post about DC comics instead of an independent publisher that could use my help much more. Okay, do you know the title of this blog ? It´s not Tales from the Independent or Tales from the Selfpublished or Tales from Anything Else but DC or Marvel. So, sorry, but you can´t call yourself Tales form the KRYPTONIAN and not write about Superman. Which means you have to write about DC. What do people think ? That I got the title for this blog out of a crackerjack box ? No, Sir, I made it up myself and it´s my way of telling people about my two biggest loves in comics but also a mission statement. So if you come here hoping to avoid DC - not gonna happen.

So, in accordance with this blog´s title, Today´s post is about Ross Andru who provided a lot of covers for ACTION COMICS. Many of these were also used for the SUPERMAN BATMAN series by german publisher Ehapa which I read on a regular basis so I tried to pick the most memorables although there might be a few covers from the SUPERMAN book mixed in here. I distinctively remember the one above because the layout just stuck with me. The story was a three parter and Superman had to transform himself into an alien - well, an alien looking alien. Some kind of a lizard creature.


Speaking about aliens, one of the toughest aliens superman went up against was the Galactic Golem and like Mongul he was created to give Superman an opponent that was on the same level of physical power.


The issue guest stars Supergirl and I have heard that SUPERMAN BATMAN 13 from 1981 is a very sought after collectors item because it reprints the story Strangers at the Heart´s Core ! which shows Supergirl in a nightie.


Back to Ross Andru´s SUPERMAN BATMAN covers there were of course some where Superman was going up against classic villains like Brainiac before Gil Kane got to his - well, I like to call it his Heavy Metal phase.


Another classic villain was Lex Luthor. Hey, I said villain. What the eff ?


So maybe I got it all wrong. Superman and his best pal Lex Luthor ..... okay, maybe they were not friends after all. That Superman is a mack.


Okay, but I´m sure I got this one right. One of Superman´s best pals from the time was Vartox because somebody at DC had obviously seen Sean Connery in the science fiction cult classic ZARDOZ and must´ve thought : " You know, that guy and Superman, they would probably be BFFs. " Which they were when they were not busy fighting each other to the death.


And yes, if you know the original cover this was mirrored by Ehapa.


Yep, there was all kind of weird s - word going down at that time like Superman suddenly breathing fire ( not that different from heat vision )


everything being upside down and time flowing backwards ( I swear this happens to me every day when I´m trying to get up in the morning )


Superman getting some javelin throwing practice - only with sky scrapes instead of a normal javelin and an incoming meteor as the target area


or the obligatory cover of Superman getting beat up by a monkey - or a very ugly alien or both - because you know that those monkey covers sell.


Then there was this incident with Lois .... ups, my bad. This was actually how Lois Lane was portrayed for most of the time. Helpless and clingy. 


And this is another cover that was inverted for the german readers.


Now not many people know this but before he became a martial arts superstar in STREET FIGHTER Blanka tried out for other jobs like the position of butler for the Fortress of Solitude. Things didn´t work out ( electro powers and scrubbing a bottle filled with tiny people don´t mix ).


And I want to end this post with a creation by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru : Metal Men villain Chemo who first appeared in SHOWCASE 39.


There are a lot of Superman related videos at COMIC MISCONCEPTIONS but I think this is the most interesting one. Divine intervention or a case of coming up with a name and finding out later that it has meaning ?



I wanted to post another video by Comicbookgirl19 AND a cosplay video so I thought : why not both ? I can´t believe I haven´t posted this one yet.



Because a lot of readers might not be familiar with the WildC.A.T.S. cartoon - or might have surpressed the memory - here´s episode one.



Either I have already posted the making of Richard Donner´s SUPERMAN movie or I can´t find the bookmark. In any case The Story of Superman goes from the creation of the comic book to the black and white tv show.



Speaking about SUPERMAN tv shows, Today´s music video is Look for the Silver Lining and it is also Superman related. Mysteries over mysteries.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Today Janet Jones Gretzky celebrates her 55th birthday so I thought it´s time to re - post her entry. The plan was to re- post the entire post and pimp the original post with some GIFs I had made the last few weeks.


But I guess that it´s true what they say about the best laid plans of men and mice because after adding all the GIFs the strain was too big and the page did not load completely anymore. So I had to cut a lot of stuff and pictures. Thankfully I had saved the original post which I restored and as there was too much I had to cut for this version this has turned into the re - posted version which is mainly about Janet Jones. I will probably have to do three new posts : one for Janet Jones, one of Leslie Easterbrook and one for Becky Mullen which will concentrate on the part about them although it will incorporate stuff about the others. I´m not sure to which extent until I have finished them but you can find the original post here .

The post about Janet Jones started as a way to give props to one of the unsung heroines that transform otherwise unwatchable b - movies into bearable entertainment. It was also a possibility for me to talk about the POLICE ACADEMY movie franchise and a whole lot of other stuff. Janet is of course best known for appearing in POLICE ACADEMY 5 - ASSIGNMENT MIAMI BEACH in a stunning white swimsuit presenting her best assets and she´s one of the reasons people still watch the movie. Or at least wait for the parts with her in them to be over before zapping to something else.


Nowadays nobody really watches the complete movies anymore because thanks to a seemingly neverending number of sequels Hollywood has managed to completely ruin the franchise. I remember seeing the first one in the theater and coming out pretty overwhelmed because at that time it was really a novel concept. And I still think the first part holds up pretty well. Not that it´s the big cinematographic gem but it´s funny and entertaining if you haven´t seen the gags repeated in the other sequels. It sure launched a few careers since it brought Steve Guttenberg a big career boost and gave Bubba Smith and Michael Winslow their big break.


Although I have to confess I´m not sure what Michael Winslow is doing right now. I know he did some really bad german movies starring Thomas Gottschalk and written by Thomas Gottschalk ( who else would cast Thomas Gottschalk in a movie who didn´t owe him a favor ? ) but also better stuff like SPACEBALLS and ROBOT CHICKEN. Steve Guttenberg was pretty big in the 80s and 90s but to the current generation he´s probably best known for playing corrupt town mayor Woody Goodman on VERONICA MARS with the lovely Kristen Bell in the lead role of plucky successor to Nancy Drew, Veronica Mars. I guess I just appeared on all search engines because I mentioned Kristen Bell. Speaking about VERONICA MARS, Charisma Carpenter also has a part on the show who is of course best known for playing Cordelia on BUFFY and later on the spin off ANGEL.


Besides VERONICA MARS Charisma Carpenter was also in episode 11 of season 5 of BURN NOTICE where she showed that she still has it.


Which brings us to Enrico Colantoni, who plays ex - sheriff / ex - private eye / new sheriff Keith Mars and he also was on an episode of BONES which is the new series of David Boreananz who plays FBI agent Seely Booth and who also played Angel first on BUFFY and then on ANGEL. And Kim Catrall - who later on had more SEX AND THE CITY - also appeared in the first POLICE ACADEMY movie. Like I said, it was pretty good but with each sequel the quality has gotten worse and worse and the only good parts were the ones with hot babes like Janet Jones who is the only reason anybody can suffer through these pieces.

The other reason is Leslie Easterbrook who plays megabusty police officer Debbi Callahan Callahan and had her best scene in POLICE ACADEMY 4 - CITIZENS ON PATROL where she wasin a poolwith a wet t - shirt .


There have been some requests for HQ GIFs of the scene but these are the best I could find. If you find any in better quality please let me know.


Leslie Easterbrook´s secondbest clip is in POLICE ACADEMY 5 when she´s on the plane and two boys stare at her cleavage thinking her fast asleep. If you pay attention you see how she first yells at them. But then when they try to check her out again you can see her flashing a proud grin and pushing her boobs up a bit so they can get a good eyeful of her melons.

Which shows what a sense of humor Callahan has and that despite everything she´s still proud of her quite distracting breasts .

She probably got that from Leslie Easterbrook, the voluptuous actress who portrays Callahan and appears in most of the POLICE ACADEMY movies, who seems like the kind of actress I’d love to have lunch with. She knows exactly what kind of movies she’s in, and plays the part with a vicious commitment unseen in most comedies of this ilk. She’s perfectly o.k. with being objectified and in interviews seems amused and tickled at some of the things she’s had to do. Pragmatic, flirty, professional and practical, Easterbrook is one of the stars of the POLICE ACADEMY series and may well be one of the women who influenced my fixation on confident blondes with big breasts that kick ass like Power Girl.


Leslie´s Callahan was kind of empowering for women, she was strong, intelligent, kick - ass tough as nails, independent and secure in her sexuality. Physically she was superior to most men who came across as rather stupid and one - minded most often suffering - or inflicting upon others - heavy injury while being distracted by her centerfold curves.

Now back to playmate Janet Jones Gretzky who was a few times on the cover and inside of PLAYBOY magazine


and yes, she that famous icehockey player´s wife.

As her appearances in the pages of PLAYBOY have proven she´s one hot masssita and since she looks absolutely boobielicious in a swimsuit she takes over Leslie Easterbrook´s part as eye candy - at least partially. In an X - Men movie I would cast Janet as Dazzler.


Or she could play my favorite X - Girl Tabitha Smith a.k.a. Boom Boom ( because of her big Boom Booms ) since they could be twin sisters.


And so you can get idea what that would look like here are some scenes from POLICE ACADEMY 5 - ASSIGNMENT MIAMI BEACH with Janet Jones in a white swimsuit or just watch the movie. If you do don´t be surprised to see Rene Auberjonois who played Odo on STAR TREK - DEEP SPACE 9.


Janet Jones, whose film credits include BEASTMASTER, STAYING ALIVE, THE FLAMINGO KID, A CHORUS LINE, AMERICAN ANTHEM and A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN also did a workout video where she wears a white suit. 


White really is her colour. I guess I would have bought her workout tape and I wouldn´t have regretted it from the short clips I was able to watch.


Janet really shows her best parts ( like her perfectly sculpted ass !!! ) and in some instances there is some nipplage visible through the thin fabric.


The tape is available through amazon so there still must be some demand for it. I´m not sure who can play it since the only way to get something equipped with a VCR is one of these combo machines that have a DVD player and those are going out of style as everything is Blue Ray now.

Speaking about hot PLAYBOY covergirls / centerfolds : Pamela Anderson hasn´t made a workout tape ( her most famous tape is more kind of a home video ) but she was on an episode of MARRIED WITH CHILDREN with Becky Mullen of which I found some GIFs while doing the research.


It´s the episode where Al is having these dream sequences with first Becky, then with Pamela and then with both fighting over him but each time it´s about to get interesting Kelly - of course - wakes him up.


I really can´t decide who´s hotter in the episode, Pamela or Becky. I mean Pamela is Pamela, my very first candidate for the SEARCH FOR POWER GIRL series but Becky is nobody you would throw out of bed either. The scene when she takes off the business suit is just extremely sexy. WOW !


Becky appeared in a few erotic movies like SINFUL INTRIGUE, which is extremely difficult to find because there seem to be at least ten movies with this name and you want to get the right one. In the movie she´s a hot babe who gets taken advantage of by her bad boyfriend who makes her do some hardcore stuff which she´s not comfortable with.

Basically he treats her like a prostitute which is not okay. Even if she has the measurements to be the centerfold of a certain publication for men I already mentioned twice in this post you should treat her with respect. But her husband is not even trying, I mean no flowers, no presents, no nice dinner, just " Slut up, wife ! " and then it´s " Wham, bang, not even Thank you, Ma´am ! " What a dork. On top of that he cheats on her with every other woman he comes across like his nymphomanic hasian porn masseuse Mai - Ling ( really, like there are no other names for asian women, but that´s Hollywood for you ) played by ultrahot Chona Jason, who gives him a special massage - one of the best scenes of the movie.


Oh, there is one decent guy in the movie who has the hots for Becky Mullen - her neighbour - but of course she keeps him at a distance and only does it with him out of pity when he´s ill. Just like in real life.


The guy who treats her like a prostitute gets to do her every which way day in and day out the whole year while the nice guy finishes last.

There´s some kind of murder story involved but the important thing is that Becky Mullen gets to strut her stuff and wears some kinky outfits. If you have a chance you should watch the movie, it´s quite entertaining and the story doesn´t distract too much from the erotic parts of it.

Now, all of this might not be interesting but the reason why I´m even mentioning it at all is that besides having parts on almost every tv show from RENEGADE to CYBIL to MADtv to PACIFIC BLUE to HUDSON STREET to HIGH TIDE to BLACK SCORPION and appearing in Andy Sidaris´ HARD HUNTED movie she also played the part of Sally, the Farmer´s Daughter.

Not on Playboy Late Night or in an erotic movie but on the first season of GLOW, Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling one of the few shows with female wrestlers shown on german tv. At that time as a wrestling fan you took what you could get and I´m not sure if the show was really that serious.


 Although there was this one episode where one of the female wrestlers had an accident and sprained or dislocated her elbow and they kept repeating that footage over and over during the show. Which was really freaking me out. There were some weird characters on the show and I remember having a thing for Palestina who had quite a big rack.


This is the clip with the best quality I could find on YouTube where she goes up against Olympia. Man, I totally forgot that she never wore a bra.



I think GLOW aired around the time when the legendary CATCH UP show was on RTL presented by Joe Williams and Horst Brack der Bestrafer ( Horst Brack the Punisher, obviously named after the MARVEL character ).


While the wrestling matches ( NWA, CWA and WCW ) were interesting the best parts were the banter between straight man Joe Williams and heel Horst Brack. And of course the highlights of the shows was the interview section BRACK´s PRANGER ( Brack´s pillory ) where Horst Brack either buttered up his guests or trashed them depending on whether he liked them or not. But Horst Brack wasn´t just like most people all talk and even participated in a few wrestling matches. I tried to find the legendary fight against Rene Lassartesse but the only video I could find was this one with a tag team match between Horst Brack & Rolo Brazil vs Rene Lasartesse & Indio Guajaro.



Horst Brack a.k.a. Rochus Hahn a.k.a. Robi is also a prolific comic writer who wrote such german cult comics like MENSCHENBLUT, DR. DIPPERZ ( the german version of Dr. House only this one really IS insane ), HORST, LUNA, ARSINOE or ALRAUNE. One of THE coolest guys in german comics.


I remember that every time at the INTERNATIONALER COMIC SALON ERLANGEN he was nominated for best writer or best comic with his newest publication from SCHWARZER TURM and most of the times won.

Since I managed to slip Power Girl into this sexist post here is a video of cosplay queen Yaya Han as Power Girl which I may have already posted.


What is interesting in the video is that even if they choose a woman to interview Yaya she still can´t help but look right at her boob window. I always tried to avoid looking at women´s breast in a too obvious way but since I read that 90 percent of women look at another woman´s breast first I have gotten a bit more relaxed about it. I mean I know why I look at a woman´s breast, it´s a biologic imperative, genetically imprinted for the survival of the species and can´t be helped. But why does a woman look at another woman´s breasts first ? To check out the competition.



Because the previous video may be a re - post here is another cosplay video where villain Fan Boy gets the upper hand against Power Girl.


The video is not that funny but the woman who plays Power Girl really fills out the magical boob window. I think it´s Vegas PG but I´m not sure.



Today´s first music video is an animated video of the song The Devil Went Down To Georgia by Primus. At least I think it´s by Primus but there´s also the same video on YouTube as the Rednex´s official video.



What I DO know : this is the original version by The Charlie Daniels Band.



Another version of that famous song some people may be more familiar with is The Devil Went Down To Jamaica from The Muppet Show.



From cult sirens to cult tv shows, we close Today´s post with another episode of CatchUp featuring Joe Williams and Horst Brack, Der Bestrafer.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN :top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

There are some posts you don´t want to write because you have already covered the subject but people can´t stop talking about it. There are some topics that get blown out of proportion in a never ending vicious circle and one of those topics is lesbians and gays in comics. It´s always good for a few news headlines and some free publicity and if somebody disagrees with your opinion just call him a sexist and a homophobic.


So since we already covered this topic here is a little re - post :

Originally written on Saturday, April the 25th of 2015

WHY ICEMAN IS NOT AS GAY AS GAMBIT IS

You must be tired of reading this but I was all ready to finally do another FLASH FRIDAY post when Disney went and crapped all over another hero.


Yep, gone are the days when X - Men were real men ( or X - Männer in my case ) all thanks to writer Brian Michael Bendis to get some publicity for ALL NEW X - MEN. I guess the sales must be floundering on that title.

COME ON THE RISIN` WIND WE`RE GOIN` UP AROUND THE BENDIS

Now I must admit that I gave Bendis ( I´m shortening the name from now on, not to dis the man - to which I would havbe good reason - but really because I´m lazy ) a second chance after he wrote what will probably go down as THE WORST story in Avengers lore EVER, the train wreck that is AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED. Longtime readers of this blog probably know all the reasons why the story sucks so much but the three things I will mention ( because I think they may come up in some posts in the near future ) is the total destruction of the character of the Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye going down in one of the most stupid death scenes I know ( basically he´s too stupid to take of his quiver ) and Doctor Strange explaining that there is no such thing as Chaos Magic after spending an entire storyline ( in his own title mind you, so Bendis had no way of knowing that ) looking for a new source of mystical power after he lost the favor of the guys he used to call upon. You would never guess what the new source of mystical power was that he used since then. Right. Chaos Magic. But that doesn´t exist - at least according to Bendis. So how could he use magic against the Scarlet Witch if his magic powers were based on Chaos Magic which according to him does not exist ?

I´m not going into this whole debate but if you want to read more about this check out Brian Cronin´s The Abandoned An’ Forsaked – Scarlet Witch Uses Chaos Magic ? post on COMIC BOOK RESOURCES´ extensive Comics should be good archive and also Neilalien´s Doctor Strange questions .


So despite all this - and a few other selected catastrophes where Marvel heroes behaved out of character - I gave Bendis a chance on ALL NEW X - MEN and so far ( I´m currently at issue 30 ) I have enjoyed the book.

In fact, apart from the months when Tim Bradstreet actually managed to deliver some art for WOLVERINE & THE X - MEN it was the only x - book I read. For somebody who has fallen off the X - Men train and not read an X - Men comic in years ( which includes basically everybody except the few diehard X - Men fans that still existed ) this was the perfect book because I had no idea what the hell was going on in the x - universe. One of the biggest things in AVENGERS vs X - MEN was Cyclops killing Charles Xavier - for everyone but me. I didn´t know he was still alive because in the last X - Men comic I read he was dead. So he was alive and then dead again.

And I guess I wasn´t the only one who couldn´t make heads nor tail of the new mutant universe. So a title like ALL NEW X - MEN, in which the five original members of the X - Men are brought into our time and everything has to be explained to them was the perfect jumping on point. Because the original X - Men had the same questions like the long absent readers.


Is Magneto currently one of the good guys or bad guys ? Was a member of the Hellfire Club really a teacher at Xavier´s school ? What the hell is a Xorn ? Since when does Wolverine remember his past ? By the way, who is this guys with claws coming out of his hands and what´s his obsession with beer ? Why hasn´t the mutant situation improved ? And what was that leather jacket nonsense all about ? Okay, so Jubilee lost her powers but got really big breasts in exchange, then was turned into a vampire and now runs around with a baby. That sounds totally normal, right ?


But not only does the series have an interesting story with the added bonus of the original members meeting up with their older counterparts, the art by Stuart Immonen is some of the best of his whole career.


Good writing, good art . . . . well, exceptional art. If you think that Stuart Immonen´s art looks good on regular pages you have to see his awesome double page spreads. Immonen totally kills it on those double pages.


Another big plus for me was that I love a good time travel story. And here Bendis really uses the possibilities of the concept of time travel. Not only do the X - Men from the past meet their counterparts from the present but they also encounter the X - Men of the future. Who are revealed as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants when the REAL X - Men from the future arrive. It´s a really big no holds barred everything goes romp through time and space to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite television shows ( the space thing coming into play when they meet the Guardians of the Galaxy and Jean Grey goes on trial for her crimes as Phoenix ).


BENDIS` WIBBLY WOBBLY TIMEY WIMEY STORYLINE CONTRADICTIONS

And here´s one of the first problems of the whole " Iceman is gay " story. The Iceman of the past who gets outed by Jean Grey - or better bullied into saying that he is gay - has met Iceman of the present who is not gay.


What´s more, he has also met his future self who is also not gay.


Okay, current Iceman - not gay. Future Iceman - not gay. Past Iceman - suddenly gay. How does that work ? If you ask me, young Jean Grey convinces young Iceman that he is gay although he isn´t. Since current Iceman really knows he isn´t gay he puts young Iceman into a facility to de - gay him with the help of future Iceman because he doesn´t want to risk becoming gay at some point in the future because of some stupid notion Jean Grey put into the head of his past self. Do you have a headache already ? Then let´s look at how it happens in issue 40 .

Bobby doesn´t come out of the closet and say he´s gay. He is railroaded by Young Jean Grey who tells him that he is gay and she knows because she has read his mind. Without his permission. But since she is getting him to admit that he´s gay it´s all right. Because where homosexuality is concerned the normal rules of human ( or mutant ) behavior do not apply.

There are so many things wrong here that I don´t know where to begin. If you knew somebody and you were convinced he was gay would you do something like this to him when he´s clearly not ready to do it himself ?



Some people may think this is helping him but how can it be helping him if you do it for him ? Now the whole thing gets even more complicated by the fact that we don´t get to see into Jean Grey´s head. Or Bobbie´s for that matter. Which is something that does happen in comics or movies.


So we don´t know what exactly Jean saw or read in Bobbie´s mind. All we know is she says he´s gay and she knows because she read his mind. So she found some thoughts of him about how hot Hugh Jackman is ? I think he´s hot - for a guy mind you - that doesn´t make me gay. Did he just think " Wow, I´m really totally gay although I can´t admit it . " or what ?

Am I the only one who finds it highly suspicious that Jean just happens to take a peek at Iceman´s head to find out he´s really gay right after he has made some inappropriate remarks about some of his female team members ? Because that´s totally what women do. They make up stuff just to mess with your head. They tell you you´re adopted or your penis is too small or that you are gay. And this Jean Grey is one loco broad, ese.


I mean everybody´s going " If Jean Grey says it it must be true because she can read minds " but we´re talking about somebody who became - or is destined to become - one of the greatest mass murderers of all times as the Dark Phoenix. Or has everybody already forgotten all about this ?


Yes, Jean Grey is not really the most mentally stable person in the x - universe especially if she gets plucked from the past, thrown into our time and told that she will become a monster and die a few times in the next years. That knowledge can really do a number on any normal person.


A READABLE MIND or I KNOW WHAT YOU THOUGHT LAST SUMMERS

Okay, so let´s just for a moment assume that Jean did read Iceman´s mind and discover he´s really gay. Why hasn´t any of the other telepaths on any of the numerous mutant teams ever found out he´s really gay ?


I mean, what about Professor Charles Xavier ? He´s a pretty big telepath and while some argue that he didn´t know because he makes it a habit not to invade people´s privacy ( a concern the young Jean Grey clearly does not share ) he trained the X - Men in defense against the dark arts . . . . I mean defense against telepathic attacks. And for that he probably had to go into their deepest minds and would have stumbled about that.

Are we really meant to believe that young Jean Grey is a better telepath than adult Charles Xavier ? And that she somehow managed to uncover in a few minutes what he failed to notice in decades ? We are talking about a time span that begins in the sixties here. Now there are people who argue that if Xavier knew Iceman was gay he would have never told him about it as long as he himself was not sure about it ( another thing young Jean Grey has no reference for ) because that could influence the whole thing. If you have seen the first MATRIX movie you probably know what a self fulfilling prophecy is. So the argument here is that IF Xavier knew Iceman was gay the moment he told him that he would have technically turned him gay or something - which is much too metaphisical for me.



Another argument is that as a mutant Iceman was already a victim of prejudice, hatred and bigotry so Xavier didn´t want to add fuel to the fire by revealing Iceman´s gayness. Which is total BS. If you are a mutant your life is already effed up enough. I mean there´s giant robots out to kill you just because you were born. What more are they going to do to you ? Hit you with the really painful death ray instead of the soft and gentle death ray ? Take away your X - Box or give you a bad grade ?


I mean Storm was never singled out from the other x - Men because they thought she would be hated more than other mutants. A mutant, an atheist, a woman AND black ? Clearly she has to suffer more than other mutants. Is that really what Disney now wants me to think ? That all people are the same but some mutants are clearly more effed up than others ? Sorry, but this kind of thinking doesn´t really work for me.


If political correctness means to divide discriminated persons into some kind of rating system depending on their " level of discrimination " I don´t want no part of it. Like, this would be discrimination but because a gay / lesbian / muslim / black person does it it´s okay ? When did this kind of reverse discrimination against certain individuals become acceptable ?

FIFTY SHADES OF GAY or STRAIGHT PEOPLE CAN BE DIFFERENT TOO

To come back to the main topic, yes, the X - Men comics have always been about being different but that doesn´t automatically mean gay.

Stan Lee came up with the idea of mutants not because he wanted to represent homosexuals and therefore he came up with these people who were born with special abilities. The simple truth is that he was sick and tired of always having to come up with a super special origin story like a radioactive spider bit him or he got hit by a radioactive gamma bomb or they were bombarded by radioactive rays from outer space. Because it´s really hard to always come off with a good origin story for every hero and with the advance of science people knew that you were more prone to die from radiation poisoning than get powers from a radioactive accident. So Stan just said " Let´s make them mutants. " and that way didn´t have to invent different origin stories for every mutant which in hindsight was a good thing because they grew like mushrooms. If you don´t believe me the whole thing is one of the original soundbites from the Man himself and you can listen to it on STAN LEE´S AMAZING MARVEL UNIVERSE, a book I pimped on this blog when amazon offered it at a bargain price.

 
I know it´s hard for some people to understand but there are individuals out there who are different and misunderstood and persecuted and who are not homosexual. Gays don´t have a monopoly on being different and certainly not on the X - Men comics. So, no, X - Men doesn´t equal gay and therefore there is no imperative for a gay member. I also don´t buy into the logic that on one side being gay is something you are born with and you can´t do anything about it but a gay man can have sex with a woman for years because he doesn´t know better or he´s afraid to tell.

Either you know you are gay and only have sex with women to pretend you are not and have a gay relationship on the side or you are not as gay as you think. I mean there are thousands of husbands who go to great lengths to come up with fool proof plans just to cheat on their wives and I´m led to believe that a gay man who has more reason to do this can´t ?

Or the whole thing that Iceman´s past relationships with women were what you call " experimenting " . I don´t know but it sounds like an awful lot of experimenting in a field he´s not supposed to like. My Mum always tells me " How do you know you don´t like something if you haven´t tried it ? "which usually is followed by her trying to get me to try some food I ALREADY know I do not like because I have FRIKKIN tried it a hundred times already. There are some things you don´t have to try for yourself - like running into a brick wall get hit by a bus - to know you don´t like them. There ARE others but if you keep experimenting and experimenting and experimenting you have to ask yourself if you really do not enjoy it.

So which part of the picture above shows Reed Richards experimenting ?

Now to come back to the topic of somebody reading Iceman´s mind and finding out he was gay - what about the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, Emma Frost ? She has spent quite some time with the X - Men and she never said anything about Iceman being gay. I mean she even switched bodies with him at one time so she definitely would have found out there.


She even was better than him of controlling his powers - was this because he spend a lot of energy on repressing something ? If Emma found out he was gay would she not have used this to mess with his head since she was still on the side of the villains ? And what about Cyclops ? He and Emma have had a lot of  intimate contact physically as well as telepathically. Would he not have found out ? Maybe she really is that good at hiding things from Scott but there are too many " buts " in this train of thought.


SHIFTING SHAPES OF GAY or SHAPESHIFTER OF MY HEART

Another big " reason " that people cite for Iceman being gay is that he had sex with Mystique who is a shapeshifter. Because if you are having sex with a shapeshifter this can only mean you want her / him / it to become a boy or a man without your teammates finding out you´re gay, right ?

Wrong. The reason why you are having sex with a shapeshifter is probably that you want to have sex with a teammate - a girl - who doesn´t want to have sex with you or you are too afraid to ask because . . . . I don´t know, maybe read minds, like Jean Grey ? So it would totally make sense.

She never read that Iceman was gay. She read that he wanted to butter her sandwich and that shocked her so much that she told him he was gay.


And before you tell me how improbable that is - am I really supposed to believe that Iceman thinks he has to have sex with a shapeshifter in secret because the other X - Men will not accept that he is gay ? Do people who think along these lines ever read an X - Man comic in their lives ?

There are numerous reasons to have sex with a shapeshifter apart from the teammate thing or having sex with a superheroine who you know would never touch you with a ten foot pole. It could be to have sex with a female super villain without having to worry that she kills you afterwards.

Which might be a moot point with somebody like Mystique anyway. Way back when I started this blog I did a - much missed by longtime readers - section called COMICBABE BATTLE which also included the hot women on the Fantastic Four. There was a post about the runners up and one about the finalist which to my own surprise was not won by the obvious choice, MILF Susan Storm, but by Lyja, Johnny Storm´s shapeshifting skrull wife.

I explained the pros of shapeshifted sex at length in those posts ( in fact I went a bit overboard and had to give Lyja her solo post ) so I won´t say anything more on that subject matter than that there are certain benefits if your sex partner can look like anybody, any celebrity - alive or dead.


So Iceman is not the first male in the Marvel universe who had sex with a shapeshifter and nobody is saying that Johnny Storm must be gay. At least until now. And you know they did it because Lyja had his egg and all.

GOING ROGUE - GAMBIT DID IT BEFORE ICEMAN SO WHO`S GAY NOW ?

Which leads us to the Rogue thing and the title of my post ( I know, you thought I´d never come around to that ), a thing that´s more based on the movie universe than on the actual comics. Iceman had a relationship with Rogue in the movies before it happened in the comics. I would even say that it would not have happened in the comics if it hadn´t happened in the movies first. In fact, it didn´t happen in the comics which for many is a sign that Iceman is indeed gay. There is an issue where Iceman goes on a road trip with Rogue and the " tell " that he is gay is that he is not trying to get Rogue into his bed. And I have to say foul on this one.


If every man who does not try to get the woman closest to him into his bed immediatelly is gay that would be a lot of men. Maybe Bobby had other things on his mind on that day or maybe she just wasn´t his type. I read an interesting post ( probably related to the Batgirl thing ) about how female leads in comics have trouble finding a partner because nobody even the most perfect male specimen is not good enough. On the other hand it seems that any female is an elegible choice for any male in comics no matter how she looks like. And that doesn´t work in the real world and it doesn´t work in comics. So maybe Rogue just wasn´t Iceman´s type.

Or it could be that Iceman knew that somebody else was always putting the moves on Rogue and wanted to avoid being caught in a love triangle.


That´s right, my little Gambito. If there ever was an X - Men who needs to come out of the closet it´s the X - Men´s Cajun fighter ( bazinga ).

I mean, come on. If being in a relationship with Rogue is a sign of being gay would Gambit not have first dibs on this ? Am I really the only one who makes the connection here ? If there´s one über compensating member of the X - Men who always has to show off and even tries to come off much cooler than Logan it´s Gambit. Really, the fake french accent, the unshaven look that went out with Don Johnson, the long hair and that awful trench coat with body armor underneath - how much gayer can you get ? And then the fact that he was wearing this coat all this time just because he knows that it will rain some day. That´s not something men do. And the whole thing with the playing cards. That´s the worst you can try to throw with the aim of hitting your target. The worst I tell you.

And then he picks the one girl of all the hot women in the x - teams who can´t be touched to be his girlfriend. She´s like " Oh, Gambit, I love you but we can never consume our love. " and he´s all " Pas de probleme, mon chere, I´m fine with that. " and this is not highly suspicious to anybody ?

For me Gambit is a representation for everything that was wrong in the 90s. He´s what happens when you try to build a character based on what the marketing experts tell you is hip with the readers. He should not even be in the X - Men after they found out he was mainly responsible for the MUTANT MASSACER, one of the bloodiest incidents in mutant history.


Now people have told me time and time again that he should be forgiven to what I answer if they would say the same about a person who aided the Nazis or somebody who participated in the lynch mobs. If you ask me, he got away easy with the X - Men just leaving him in the antarctica to die.

Which happened in UNCANNY X - MEN 350, one of the X - Men comics I have read most often and not only because Gambit gets his just reward ( there´s some Madureiras art ). It´s one of the best written single issues by Steve Seagle which got totally butchered in the german translation.


Okay, back to our topic IF there is a character who is gay because he´s in a relationship with Rogue it should be Gambit. So why is it Iceman ?

MARVEL´S GAY MUTANT HYSTERIA or MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING 

Because nobody cares, that´s why. I know, there´s this whole thing now on the internet - and I´m participating - but it´s not about Iceman. It´s really more about the way they did it. Because it makes no sense like I´ve been saying the whole time. This is just Bendis trying to get the spotlight because I don´t believe for a minute that he just wanted to " write his story without it all becoming a big deal ". If that´s what he wanted he would have written it differently because it is possible to have gay characters in the Marvel universe without it becoming a big deal.

Like Wiccan and Hulkling on YOUNG AVENGERS. They are a gay couple and they never made the big news headlines. Why ? Because like I already wrote in my Is Warren Ellis gayer than Erik Larsen ? post, there are certain writers who just include gay or lesbian characters to become newsworthy. And it´s our own fault if they still succeed with this.

One part of this is clearly to get into the news. Because they didn´t choose Cyclops - that would have been too unbelievable after his time with Jean Grey and Emma Frost. They didn´t pick the Beast because they already tried that and backpedaled on that a few issues later. They didn´t pick Angel because they didn´t want trouble with the catholic church - if you´re making an angel gay that´s like picking a fight with the pope. So who´s left of the original X - Men who´s not a girl ? Right. The ice dude. The one member writers have been struggling with for years. Let´s be honest, there are no big stories involving Iceman which don´t include him losing his powers or his powers getting out of control. So you pick the X - Man who´s always in the background and turn him into a homosexual.


They didn´t get the attention they wanted with Northstar, Shatterstar, Rictor or any of the other b - or even c - listers like the Avenger´s Living Lightning so now they try their luck with one of the original X - Men.

And they want to give SONY the finger. SONY is clinging to the X - Men movie rights like the devil to a sinner´s soul so Disney is turning the Inhumans into the new X - Men. And they make Iceman gay. How you like that SONY ? I think it´s just pathetic. I have been reading ALL NEW X - MEN so far and I totally planned to keep it on my pull list. Yes, Stuart Immonen has left the title to do black Captain America but Mahmud Asrar is one of the best pencilers in the business right now so there´s no big problem there. They are going to make Mike Morales Spider - Man a team member in the next issues which I don´t have a problem with. I never read any of his ULTIMATE SPIDER - MAN issues but more because it´s not my book. My brother was following that series - at least until they killed off Peter Parker. I´m anxious to see how they end up in his reality.


But the whole " Iceman is now gay " thing ? That is so hamfisted that I doubt I will be reading the title after that. Which is a real pity because there are really not that many good titles left at Disney. But who knows ? The whole Marvel universe is supposed to end in a few months anyway so who knows how long our new gay Iceman is going to make it in the end.


I don´t know but it seems to me that there are not many decent writers left at Marvel. Iceman is gay because Jean Grey tells him. Thor becomes unworthy of Mjolnir because somebody whispers something in his ear. And Ghost Rider is now Ghost Racer because he drives a car. This is not comic writing but definitely abuse of drugs or other illegal chemical substances.


Two founding members of the Avengers are down - is Iron Man next ?

And this is the point where it´s time to end this and leave other things like black Captain America for another post. Today´s post has ben a re - post which means that most of the pictures have been changed for the benefit of the readers who have already read it. It also means that I added some new videos ( use the link to the original post in the header for all the videos about gay Iceman ) and I want to start with another great video by Comicbookgirl19 about X - MEN : BATTLE OF THE ATOM, one of the many good stories from ALL NEW X - MEN pre gay Iceman.



I wanted to put this in the original post but it was already too long.



Another great audition from The X - Factor and no, I´m not implying anything here. I don´t think there is any video from the casting shows I bookmarked that fits this topic. You can read into that what you want.



This video however HAS a connection to ALL NEW X - MEN  and Iceman.



I hate ending a post on a downer but since I learned that german comic legend Hansrudi Wäscher died from this post on COMIC BITS ONLINE I wanted to post this in memory of some of my childhood comic reads.



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The last two days I was too busy to do a new post and even the last one I did was a re - post of an older post. Today is no exception but while I don´t have time to write one of those long winded posts I want to continue with the second issue of George Perez´ LOGAN`S RUN comic.


So far I´ve gotten no comments on issue 1 of this series but - like I said in my first post about this - I haven´t seen this on any other websites. So here´s the second issue and this one is written by David Kraft ( which sounds like a bad super villain name since" Kraft "is german for" Power " ), pencils by George Perez, inks by Klaus Janson ( sounds german too ).

By the way, I just realized the Total Pageviews counter has just jumped past the 1,500,000 mark. Yay ! Thanks to all my loyal readers for that.


As you can see from the letters page - or rather editorial page since it has no actual letters - the writer of this story is indeed David Anthony Kraft ( thanks for bringing this to my attention, Terry ) who had worked with George Perez on CREATURES ON THE LOOSE. I did a post on issue 34.


At Marvel David was the editor for FOOM from issue 15 until the final issue and he wrote the first SHE HULK series, except the first issue.


He wrote other books like CAPTAIN AMERICA but he´s probably best known for his work on the DEFENDERS, most notably his Scorpio Saga.


At DC he wrote WORLD`S FINEST COMICS from 1983 to 1984 including issue 300. A lot of those ended up in the german SUPERMAN BATMAN.


In 1974 he founded specialty science fiction publisher Fictioneer Books. Over the years, Fictioneer has published books by such authors as A. E. van Vogt, Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, and Don McGregor.

Fictioneer Books and its imprint Comics Interview Group also published magazines like David Anthony Kraft's Comics Interview, trade journals like Comics Revue and the trade text 100 Hot Tips from Top Comics Creators. In early 1985 Comics Interview Group branched out into comic books by taking on Henry and Audrey Vogel's Southern Knights ( previously a self - published series ). In 1986 they expanded their comics lineup with MICRA and Aristocratic Xtraterrestrial Time - Traveling Thieves, and began to publish a number of Southern Knights reprints as trades, one shots and limited series. 1988 saw them also introduce Julie Woodcock and Brian Stelfreeze's CyCops but none of their comics publications sold as well as Southern Knights and by the end of that year they had stopped publishing any other titles. In mid - 1989 Southern Knights was canceled as well, and the Comics Interview imprint was again devoted solely to magazines and trade publications although they would co-publish Southern Knights No. 35 and 36 in 1992. You can still find some of those collections on amazon.


When I heard the title SOUTHERN KNIGHTS the first thing I thought about was HOUSTON KNIGHTS or LOS CABALLEROS DE HOUSTON which is how I first came to know the show since american series always are broadcast years before they reach Germany. Longtime readers may recall that I mentioned that DRAGONBALL had been on tv in Spain ten years before is was shown to german audiences and even then only in a highly censored version. Anyway, HOUSTON KNIGHTS was one of my favorite tv series starring Michael Beck ( whatever happened to him ? ) and Michael Pare.



We all know what happened to Michael Pare : he starred in a few really good movies like STREETS ON FIRE and a lot of not so good movies like GARGOYLES. One of his better movies is EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS II : EDDIE LIVES which has just awesome music. While it´s a fantastic movie the problem is that it´s a sequel and the original movie is not available in Germany. I don´t know if it was ever shown in theaters or on tv but there is no german language version available only the english version and even that goes for 50 bucks or more on amazon. So if you live in Germany and want to see the movie but don´t have a spare 50 EURO bill laying around ( and who has in these times ? ) the only way to see it is to go to YouTube.



One of the AVENGERS issues I always associate with George Perez is issue 171 which I first read in the spanish edition - because tv shows are not the only thing that Germany got much later than Spain. Which is probably the reason why I always felt like I had to returned to a backwater country from the real world every time I came back from my vacations in Spain.



I mentioned She Hulk so here´s a video from COMIC MISCONCEPTIONS which explains one - only one - of the many reasons why John Byrne´s run of the book is the best there was and the best there ever will be. Sigh !



There are two reasons why I picked this as our last video : to keep with the whole theme of cowboys and country because the guy in it is from Georgia and because Howard Stern, who is in the jury celebrates his 62nd birthday Today. Happy birthday to you, Howard, and many happy returns.



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Since it´s her 48th birthday Today I wanted to give a big shout - out to one of my favorite tv hardbodies, nubian sex goddess Traci Bingham.


To answer the question from the title : last year I didn´t make a comic related post between Janet Jones Gretzky´s birthday and Traci Bingham´s birthday because I don´t like to do two cult siren posts in a row. It upsets some people ( just read the comments on this year´s post for Janet Jones Gretzky ) so I try to avoid that. But this year I can fire away, so to speak.


She is of course best known for her role of buxom 36D hardbody Jordan Tate on BAYWATCH and whatever you say about David Hasselhoff but he sure has an eye for hot babes. On Baywatch we had Traci Bingham


ultimate Power Girl Pamela Anderson from my SEARCH FOR POWER GIRL series ( who was in Playboy most often of all the hot Baywatch babes )


dancer Carmen Electra ( like Pamela she was in Playboy several times )


the first Power Girl of the show Erika Eleniak ( she was also a playmate ) who is best known for her mindblowing striptease on UNDER SIEGE



sexy and exotic Stacy Kamano from BAYWATCH HAWAII, Vanessa Angel from WEIRD SCIENCE, Krista Allen who played Emanuelle in the tv series



and also playmate and Penthouse pet and pornstar Teri Weigel, Jenny Mc Carthy, Jasmine Bleeth, Donna D´Erico, Kelly Monaco, Brande Roderick, Nicole Eggert ( who celebrates her 41st birthday Today but I can´t do another post Today, sorry ), Mitzi Capture and Gina Lee Nolin among others. Most of them have been in Playboy and other men´s magazines.


Back to Traci Bingham I always hoped they would cast her as Storm in the next X- Men movie since there were rumors that Halle Berry wouldn´t return to the role. I guess I´m probably the only who would cast Janet Jackson as Storm but in my opinion she got the best body in showbiz.

Especially her incredibly round derriere is awesome and could go head to head ( or butt to butt ) with the likes of Beyonce. Sadly, Janet doesn´t seem to think so but if you have seen her ultra raunchy live performance of her hit ALL NIGHT ( DON´T STOP ) at Jay Leno where she had one of her best almost wardrobe malfunctions EVER you know it´s true.


During that performance Janet had some problems with keeping her pants on as it seems that she miscalculated the weight of the cable box thingie.


Now Janet is already wearing her jeans way low but the added weight of it plus the chains she put on her jeans are pulling her pants down showing lots of butt cleavage ! Also her constant grinding and hip shaking doesn´t help much either. But Janet is a real trooper and keeps going even if the audience gets to see more than she initially intended to show. Throughout the entire performance she keeps pulling up her jeans to cover up her juicy cheeks and at the end she almost manages to get it under control but at the beginning you can see that she really has no reason to be ashamed in that department. She didn´t completely loose her pants - sigh - but it slid waay down to give a good view of her almost uncovered bubble butt and you even could see her bum cleft for short periods.


Okay, back to casting Janet Jackson as Storm in an X - Men movie : let´s say I´m okay with Hollywood thinking she´s not right for that but how about casting her as Storm´s lost sister ? Come on, work with me here.


With all the useless changes you have done in comic movies so far, how about doing some good ? We could have Janet AND Traci in a movie.

Boy, that John Byrne guy really knew how to draw some hot babes which was one of the reasons why I got hooked so easily by the series. Subzero wasn´t old enough to buy Playboy so comic book massitaas were my porn.



Wait, because of popular demand by one reader ( hey, if you have so low hits per day like me every one of them counts ) I can´t end this post without mentioning sexbomb Kelly Rowland who is hotter than Beyonce. 


So what do you think ? Who is sexier ? Kelly Rowland or Beyonce Knowles ?


Before finishing the post there are a few videos I want to re - post, and the first one is from her rack - tastic appearance on the Jay Leno show 2013. Man, at 46 she made all eyes pop out with a sexed up f me dress !



Since I have mentioned the hot women on the Jay Leno show here´s  a boob - tastic one with Mariah Carey in a black dress that has no hope of restraining her huge melons and Jay Leno is chest choking, just joking.


But seriously Mariah Carey looks just totally doable in her black dress.



Next up is Jessica Simpson´s wowing appearance on the Jay Leno show ( you might say she´s not the brightest lightbulb but daimn, she had a booming body back then ) where she looks almost like Marilyn Monroe.


Okay, the porn version. Did she ever play a femme fatale or porn star ?



Also here´s Jennifer Love Hewitt in a black dress on the Ellen Degeners show where she´s almost falling out of its huge cleavage. You go girl !



Well, it looks like I finally found a video with Traci Bingham in HQ.



Because of popular demand here´s another dance from Dead Or Alive 2.



Speaking about hot dances, I thought I had already posted various videos by the world´s best bellydancer Didem Kinali when in fact I only posted one. So to remedy that unbearable situation here´s a really good one.



I´m not quite sure how I found this video and I also couldn´t tell you the name of the band or the song ( na eks ? ). All I know is that it´s some kind of wild west clip with very busty women. Is that not enough ?



And just so you know what we are talking about in the comments here´s Kelly Rowland with Commander featuring David Guetta. Kelly got back.



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