If you are reading this you already know that the birthday post about Traci Bingham didn´t go up as planned - which might not be a bad thing - since this gives me the opportunity to do a more comic oriented post about the Chris Claremont / John Byrne / Terry Austin period of UNCANNY X - MEN.


There are few things all comics fans can agree to so this alone should tell you what a high quality the stories and the art of these stories have since they are collectively considered the gold standard all other creative art teams on the title strive to achieve ever since - successfully or not.

And if you have watched Comic Book Girl 19´s fantastic X - MEN : EPIC HISTORY videos ( and at this point I assume everybody who has only the slightest interest in X - Men has ) you know that one of the reasons why she started this series ( which will hopefully be continued so please go and support her channel ) is that while there have been a lot of X - Men movies in the last years that are really good - and another one coming with X - MEN : APOCALYPSE - up to this point there hasn´t been an adequate representation of the Chris Claremont / John Byrne X - Men.

I know there are some changes you have to make when you adapt a comic from the printed page to the silver screen and I applaud the efforts they have done to stay true to the characters but I still miss the version that I became a fan of when I read my first issues in the spanish translations.


Which - as was the norm back then even with spanish comics - was not at the start of the Chris Claremont / John Byrne X - Men run but rather in the middle of The Dark Phoenix Saga. Luckily I was able to find a few older issues so that I managed to get as far back as The Proteus Saga.


Which in my opinion doesn´t get nearly enough credit as it deserves.

Being overshadowed by The Dark Phoenix Saga this four part story from issues 125 to 128 of UNCANNY X - MEN was a first step into the dark and realistic stories that were to follow during Chris Claremont´s and John Byrne´s tenure on the book. It also filled in a lot of back story with Professor Charles Xavier and Moira McTaggert and gave Chris Claremont a chance to explore the characters as they really went through the ringer in this one. Especially Cyclops showed why he was such a great leader and it is because of these issues that he became my favorite character in the book. This was before he was transformed into a giant dick, mind you.


Yep, Wolverine was still human back then and could be rattled by the experience of going up against Proteus who could bend reality to his will.


Which was a perfect opportunity for artist John Byrne to really let loose.


To back up on the story a little - and this is the part with the spoilers for those who still haven´t read the Chris Claremont / John Byrne run - when we open in issue 125 the X - Men have split into two factions and each of them thinks the other part is dead. Which is the result of a fight against Magneto in his base in Antarctica which was engulfed by lava and in the ensuing chaos the team was separated. Jean Grey and the Beast escaped into the antarctic wilderness where they were rescued by a helicopter. The rest of the team was trapped underground and ultimately landed in the Savage Land. Which is one of the stories I would have adapted as a X - Men movie and not only because Storm has a nice outfit in that one. 


You have the whole prehistoric world backdrop of a lost civilization at the earth´s core which has inspired stories from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle´s LOST WORLD ( which is adapted ad infinitum ) to Mike Grell´s WARLORD.


Ever since JURASSIC PARK dinosaurs in movies are doable and much more exciting than the go - motion puppets or lizards with prosthetics that were used in movies when I was a kid. So in this story you have the jungle backdrop, you have dinosaurs, you have topless tribeswomen even if John Byrne could not do full frontal nudity because of the Comics Code 


and you have Storm taking a bath which is sadly cut short by Karl Lykos, a mutant who transforms into a half human half pterodactyl creature. Who calls himself Sauron, so nice Tolkien reference there Mister Claremont.


Here is the color version of this gorgeous splash page from issue 115 :



Back then the art team combo of penciler John Byrne and inker Terry Austin were really knocking it out of the ballpark on that book with each issue. Here´s another awesome double page spread fron that issue :


Once again - to compare - here´s the original art of that splash page.
I know that I posted some of the art in my Days of Future Past long gone by post but then I only had the colored versions and I wanted to add the black and white art. Okay, back to missed opportunities in X - Men movies I would have probably given my right arm to see Janet Jackson in that role but I guess I´m the only one who would had cast her for that role.



The same goes for Traci Bingham, who was my other default casting for Storm before Halle Berry got the role. It really shows how business savy Pamela Anderson is because from all the babes that were on BAYWATCH she is the only one who was able to garner that attention into a long lived career. Even if she too did some questionable movies. And it´s not that Traci Bingham was less attractive but she somehow only ended up making bad movies and even worse reality tv after BAYWATCH ( which I covered a bit more in detail in her birthday post which I will hopefully get posted ).



Staying a bit on the topic of missed opportunities in the X - Men movies I have to say that even if I´m a big fan of Halle Berry ( I own CATWOMAN on DVD ) I was a bit disappointed that she didn´t get to wear the classic " swimsuit with leather boots " outfit. Halle would have totally rocked that.


Another costume that would have looked good on Halle Berry is the big 90s anime shoulder leather costume Storm had during the Blue Team / Gold Team era but I guess it was too new wave / punk for Hollywood.


Speaking of punk, there is also Storm´s punk outfit with the mohawk when she returned from SECRET WARS and lost her powers. She was totally bad ass, fought Cyclops for leadership of the X - Men and won. 


So from all of Storm´s long and interesting history almost nothing of that made it into the movie adaptions and somehow Halle Berry ended up with the worst of all the costumes from the comics even though they had such a variety to choose from. It´s a real shame that they couldn´t find more to do for such an award winning actress who still looks fantastic at 49. 


But back to The Proteus Saga ( which is what I was talking about before going completely on a tangent ) at the start of the story the x - Men think that Jean Grey and the Beast are dead while they think the rest of the X - Men are dead. The remaining X - Men have their adventure in the Savage Land in issues 114 to 116 and Jean and Hank have their own stuff to deal with so like in every good soap opera they keep missing each other until Nightcrawler has a run in with Beast. Finally the X - Men team is reunited.


Just in time to go up against Moira´s parasitic offspring Proteus who has left a trail of dead bodies in his wake and resides in Moira´s abusive ex.


Because of his reality warping powers the X - Men have a hard time but in the end it´s Colossus who manages to vanquish the villain thanks to his vulnerability to metal. It´s a really character defining moment for Piotr.


To read more about The Proteus Saga Duy Tano at THE COMICS CUBE has a post that covers all this, BRONZE AGE BABIES has single posts on all the issues ( 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 ) and SCANS DAILY has a post on Shreds of Humanity, a back up story by Ann Nocenti and John Bolton in issue 32 of CLASSIC X - MEN, which is the series where I could finally read all the issues by Chris Claremont that were missing in my collection in their original version. This was long before Marvel Comics had so many trades.


Coming back to the UNCANNY X - MEN run by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, one of the reasons why I got hooked so easily by the series was that John Byrne really knew how to draw hot babes ( remember this shot of Jean Grey ? ). It was just at the time when I became interested in girls but was too young to buy the PLAYBOY so comic massitas were my porn.


Especially the issues with the Hellfire Club although I wasn´t so sure at that time what the whole deal with Jean Grey´s outfit was since you could see more of her when she was wearing a bikini. Yes, the full appreciation for the Emma Peel inspired corsage and leather boots came years later.


But more than that these were really great stories and it´s a shame that most of it never made it into the movies. Now I could say that there are millions of poor movie goers out there who will never get to experience the greatness that was the new X - Men in its full effect because while some may actually set foot in a comic shop to get The Dark Phoenix Saga most of them don´t realize that there are also preceding stories like The Phoenix Saga or The Proteus Saga which are also part of that big opus.


Yes, I said " I could say " because I think that if you are too lazy to read the comics it´s your own fault with all the different versions like digital comics or the hefty omnibuses in which all these stories are available.


And this is all I´m going to say about this topic Today but I´m sure there will be more posts about the Chris Claremont / John Byrne run on X - Men in the future. When I have finished with this post I will try to finally get the Traci Bingham post online although I will probably change some of the pictures as I have used some of them for this post and I try to avoid posting the same pictures over and over again if possible. Next here will probably be my post about how Power Man and Iron Fist met Doctor Who.


As usual there are many websites to give thanks to and mention which were helpful during the making of this post or I found them while looking for something completely different and they still have something which might interest my readers. The impromptu outdoor danger room session from UNCANNY X - MEN 127 is the topic of two posts, one at SCANS DAILY and one at COMIC BOOK RESOURCES which also has posts on The Top Five " Bang ! You Dead ! " moments in X - Men comics , The Many Dead Loves of Wolverine , That Time Wolverine " Fought " a Little Lisping Girl Robot Bomb and the anniversary 50th issue of WOLVERINE by Marc Silvestri.


For a bit more background info SUPER MEGA MONKEY`S MARVEL COMICS CHRONOLOGY has a post on UNCANNY X - MEN issues 111 to 117 and iFANBOY has the famous page from UNCANNY X - MEN 142 where a sentinel kills Wolverine. Many thanks and kudos go out to all you guys.


We start Today´s video section with the first issue of The Proteus Saga and you can find the other issues ( as well as many more ) on YouTube.



I talked a lot about Chris Claremont so here he is on Comic Culture.



Another video with Amy Dallen about ... well, it says in the title that it´s about WOLVERINE & THE X - MEN ( which was one of the few good series left at Marvel before they relaunched it ) but the biggest part is about Amy going to the zoo to look for new students for the mutant school.



Since most of the videos from the X - MEN cartoon are of a questionable quality due to their restrictions Today´s cartoon related video is the Nostalgia Critic´s examination of the first episodes of the cartoon. And I have to agree, without the rapping wannabe juvenile delinquents from the german version the title song is totally Airwolf. By the way, not only was The Proteus Saga adapted in the cartoon - although in a much diluted version - one of the characters was Morph who was on EXILES and met another version of Proteus in one of the alternate realities they visited.



This is from an episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon I just watched and it´s the best musical impressions ever. Ariana is not " grande " where her height is concerned but her voice is " grande ".



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 is Edgar Allan Poe´s birthday so I wanted to do something special and post two of his classic tales by two of the greatest comic artists.


Longtime readers may recall that I posted links for these stories in 2011 but since the blog in question no longer exists it´s fair to re - post them.

The first artist is Bernie Wrightson who is not only one of the best known horror comic artists but one of the greatest artists - period who has lent his talent to uncounted horror mags like DC´s THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY.


Speaking about DC Bernie Wrightson is of course best known for his SWAMP THING series he did with writer Len Wein in the 70s which is one of horror comics classic series. Just check out this great collection of SWAMP THING splash pages from DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND .


Our first story is THE BLACK CAT which was first published by Warren in CREEPY 62 ( May 1974 ) and which I read for the first time in color in Pacific Comics´ BERNIE WRIGHTSON - MASTER OF THE MACABRE series.

I wrote earlier that the blog where I found these stories has been deleted but I just found out that Henry J. Kawuga on PROFESSOR H`S WAYBACK MACHINE has a post on the color version of this story by Pacific and also a the original black and white version ( which includes the german version of the first page ). There are all kind of links to other interesting posts with other adaptions of Edgar Allen Poe stories there so check them out.  


So I thought THE GOLDEN AGE has vanished but it seems it just found a new home. Which means I can at least fix the links on the other post.

Our second story is by Richard Corben, also one of the greatest artists there is who has done everything from horror to fantasy to sci fi.


He´s best known for his lavishly illustrated ( and quite graphic ) DEN and FUTURE WORLD series but lately he has done a lot of Edgar Allan Poe adaptions for Dark Horse which have just been collected. He also did a five issue mini series called RAT GOD which I still haven´t bought.

The Raven by Richard Corben also appeared in CREEPY, in issue 67 ( December 1974 ) and you can also find the story on THE GOLDEN AGE and COMICS BOOKS STORIES. I was thinking about just posting the links but since I already promised to post two stories I can´t back out now.


I got no links for Richard Corben but Hyperdave at DATAJUNKIES offer a brief Bernie Wrightson retrospective, SCANS DAILY has a post on his Frankenstein portfolio and you can listen to him at the Sidebar podcast.

Before we come to the video section there are two more birthdays I have to mention. The first one is Julia Louis Dreyfus who celebrated her 55th birthday last Wednesday. Yes, that´s right. On the same day that Traci Bingham ( and Nicole Eggert ) have their anniversary and somehow I completely blank on it every year. To Today´s audiences she´s best known as Vice President Selina Meyer on the comedy show VEEP but I saw her first as the funny and sexy Elaine Bennet on the cult show SEINFELD.


Even though it was not shown to the general public in Germany ( they always aired it when most people were asleep ) I managed to catch a few with Elaine´s best scenes. SEINFELD has been in amazon´s bargain section a few times now but as always I didn´t have the money to spend.


The other birthday is country mega star Dolly Parton who turned 70 Today. In her case nomen really is omen because if anyone looks like a living blowup sexdoll it´s the blonde with the huge twin torpedoes ( which have been reported anything from 38CC to 48DD ) with the world record for a woman with the biggest breasts in a non r - rated movie for Nine To Five. One thing´s for sure : Dolly´s husband definitely needs no viagra pills.


Because I still haven´t watched The Best Little Whorehouse ( I don´t like movies about society´s double standards ) I have decided to do a post about Edgar Allan Poe instead which I know is a relief to some readers. Speaking about double standards, I find it unsettling that I never get comments about these horror posts or the ones that talk about alternate sexualities but whenever there is a picture of a hot woman ( not even full frontal or any nudity ) people are up in arms commenting. Anyway, while I didn´t make a post on Dolly I still want to wish her a happy 70th birthday.

Since it´s her birthday Today I want to start the video section with Dolly Parton. As country music is mostly neglected on german tv most of the clips of her on YouTube are new to me and since I couldn´t find one in good quality I opted for one from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.



For our other birthday candidate I picked An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe, where Vincent Price recites various stories to a live audience.



Combining country and horror we have the Oak Rigde Boys with Elvira.



Today´s cartoon video is The Simpson´s version of The Raven which was part of one of their Halloween episodes. These episodes are always great and while I don´t read as many Simpson comics as I used to I still make sure to get each new issue of BART`S TREEHOUSE OF HORROR which has always great guest artists like Gene Colan. By the way, on the Simpsons they predicted Donald Trump as president of America in the future.



There don´t seem to be any good videos with Richard Corben on YouTube so here is a motion comic that uses Bernie Wrightson´s Frankenstein.



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


If you don´t like the road you´re walking start paving another one.

This post was supposed to be up after my Chris Claremont / John Byrne X - Men post but this way it goes online on Tom Baker´s 82nd birthday.


Another factor that facilitates writing this post is that just Yesterday I finished reading the Epic Collection Power Man & Iron Fist - Heroes for Hire and the second volume of Essential Power Man and Iron Fist which contains the issue in question. But first a bit of background information.

WHY HEROES FOR HIRE ARE NOT THE DEFENDERS AND VICE VERSA

Now that the Netflix DAREDEVIL series is such a huge success and JESSICA JONES is becoming a similar tv hit there are all kinds of rumors floating around on the internet and most of them are started by people who have no real knowledge of comics. Because one of the characters on JESSICA JONES is Luke Cage and now that it is confirmed that there are plans to give him and possibly Iron Fist a solo series there is this big rumor that it´s all coming together in a series called, wait for it - THE DEFENDERS.

Say what ?

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. When you think about the Defenders Power Man and Iron Fist aren´t really the first names that come to mind. They are rather footnotes in the Defenders history. Before the 2011 relaunch by Terry Dodson Iron Fist was even in the " Defenders for a Day " section.


So you know which comics the producers of the show have read. Certainly not the classic ones and even though they base it solely on the FEARLESS DEFENDERS I doubt that we will see characters like Red She Hulk, Namor, the Valkyrie, Hulk or Doctor Strange on the show now that Benedict Cumberbatch is going to portray the good Doctor in an upcoming movie.

You say I´m wrong here since Luke Cage and Iron Fist were both in the Defenders, or at least in the Secret Defenders although not at the same time ? Okay, even if we let the fact aside that Iron Fist and Luke Cage were in Heroes for Hire in the longest part of their career they also were part of Brian Michael Bendis´ New Avengers (which was basically just his version of the Secret Defenders ). In fact, Jessica Jones was also part of that so if we don´t call the Iron Fist / Power Man team Heroes for Hire shouldn´t we call it New Avengers before we call it Defenders ? Because to my knowledge Jessica Jones has never been a member of the Defenders.


I mean Hawkeye, Black Knight, Yellowjacket, Wasp, Miss Marvel, Moon Knight, Falcon, Herkules, Moondragon, Black Panther, Wonder Man, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Beast, Captain America, War Machine, Doctor Druid, U. S. Agent and Ant Man have all been members of the Defenders at one time or another but if you saw all of them together would you really call them the Defenders or would you not rather call them the Avengers ? 


Okay, so who are the original Defenders ? The first team was Doctor Strange, Hulk, Namor the Sub - Mariner and the Silver Surfer and even if the last one joined late these are considered the four core members.


The origin of the Defenders lies in two crossover stories by Roy Thomas prior to the official founding of the team. The first, in DOCTOR STRANGE 183, SUB - MARINER 22, and THE INCREDIBLE HULK 126 occurred when the DOCTOR STRANGE series was canceled and the storyline was then completed in the other series. Dr. Strange teams with Sub - Mariner, then the Hulk to protect the Earth from invasion by Lovecraftian inter - planar beings known as the Undying Ones and their leader, the Nameless One. Barbara Norriss, later the host of the Valkyrie, first appears in this story.


In the second arc in SUB - MARINER 34 - 35, Namor enlists the aid of the Silver Surfer and Hulk to stop a potentially devastating weather control experiment, inadvertently freeing a small island nation from a dictator and facing the Avengers under the unofficial name of the " Titans Three ".


The Defenders first appeared as a feature in MARVEL FEATURE 1, where the founding members battled the alien techno - wizard Yandroth, and remained as a team afterward. Due to the popularity of their tryout in MARVEL FEATURE, Marvel soon began publishing DEFENDERS. Then my favorite nordic metal bikini wearing sexbombshell with the huge twin torpedoes, theValkyrie was introduced to the team in issue 4. Writer Steve Englehart has stated that he added the Valkyrie to the Defenders " to provide some texture to the group "and ho - boy I loved her textures.


Englehart wrote THE AVENGERS - DEFENDERS CLASH crossover in AVENGERS 116 - 118 and DEFENDERS 9 - 11. Len Wein briefly wrote the series and introduced such characters as Alpha the Ultimate Mutant and the Wrecking Crew. He later became the editor for several issues. This is the point where the second team of Defenders emerged which included Nighthawk, yes, Luke Cage too but most importantly such hot babes like the aforementioned Valkyrie, Hellcat and Red Guardian. I really should have done a COMICBABE BATTLE entry on that group back in the day.


Steve Gerber first worked on the characters in GIANT - SIZE DEFENDERS 3 and became the writer of the main title with issue 20 the following month. He wrote the series until issue 41. Part of Gerber's oeuvre was reviving forgotten characters; he brought back three pre - Marvel characters, the Headmen, as well as the Guardians of the Galaxy. The Defenders even met Gerber's Howard the Duck in MARVEL TREASURY EDITION 12. In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Gerber and Sal Buscema's run on the DEFENDERS title first on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".


David Anthony Kraft's run as writer included " The Scorpio Saga " ( issues 46, 48 - 50 ) and the " Xenogenesis : Day of the Demons " storyline ( issues 58 - 60 ). The " Defender for a Day " storyline in issues 62 - 64 saw dozens of new applicants attempting to join the Defenders ( which includes Iron Fist on his first shortlived membership ), as well as a number of villains attempting to present themselves as Defenders members in order to confuse the authorities and the public as they commit robberies. Kraft later recalled that reactions to the story's off - beat humor were polarized: " readers were either wildly enthusiastic or absolutely and very utterly appalled. "Kraft and artist Ed Hannigan explained some of the Valykrie's backstory in DEFENDERS 66 - 68.


Steven Grant wrote a conclusion to Steve Gerber's OMEGA THE UNKNOWN in two issues of DEFENDERS, at the end of which most original characters were killed. While Gerber seemed unhappy with Grant's conclusion, it tied up the loose ends of the series, and is considered " canon " by Marvel.


Writer J. M. DeMatteis took over the series starting with DEFENDERS issue 92. Coming from a background of writing eight page horror shorts for DC, DeMatteis found it a struggle to adapt to writing a 22 page superhero comic on a monthly basis. He and Mark Gruenwald co - wrote DEFENDERS 107 - 109, which resolved remaining plot points from the Valkyrie story by Kraft and Hannigan published three years earlier. While working on the series, DeMatteis developed a strong friendship with penciler Don Perlin, who would draw the series for nearly half its run.


At this point we have heroes like Son of Satan, Thing, Moon Knight and Devil - Slayer among its rotating membership but still no further Iron Fist.

Suffering from creative burnout on the series, DeMatteis felt a change was needed. As of issue 125, THE DEFENDERS was retitled to THE NEW DEFENDERS as the original four members are forced to leave the team, in response to an alien prophecy that states that these four, operating as a group, would be responsible for destroying the world. The Beast reforms the team as an official super hero team with government clearance. The NEW DEFENDERS concept provided a substantial boost to the series's sales, but left DeMatteis in a creative drought. He realized in retrospect that "... I created a book that was exactly the kind of the thing that I hated to write. I made it into a standard superhero team ..." He stayed on for only six issues before turning it over to the new writer Peter Gillis.


The series's final issue was THE NEW DEFENDERS 152. Penciler Don Perlin recounted " Editor Carl Potts he took me and Peter Gillis to lunch. We went to an Indian restaurant ... He said,‘They canceled the book.’" In the final issue, several members ( Gargoyle, Moondragon, Valkyrie, Andromeda, Manslaughter, Interloper ) seemingly die in battle with the Dragon of the Moon. The remaining members leave the team to join X - Factor. Several of these seemingly - deceased members later returned in issues of SOLO AVENGERS, in STRANGE TALES vol. 2 issues 5 - 7, followed by issues 3 - 4 of the relaunched DOCTOR STRANGE, SORCERER SUPREME.


But the Defenders history doesn´t end here. If you want to read in detail about it just go to the wikipedia entry but if we ever want to get back to Power Man, Iron Fist and Doctor Who I have to give you the short version.

In Peter David´s HULK run it was revealed that the prophecy was a hoax and there was a reunion of the original three members in 370 and 371.


They united with the Silver Surfer during The Return of the Defenders story which ran through the annuals of all four members and it is included in the newly released Epic Collection HULK - GHOST OF THE PAST trade.

Marvel tried to revive the concept in 1993 in SECRET DEFENDERS where Doctor Strange handpicked each team for the upcoming mission among them Luke Cage and Iron Fist. But because Doctor Strange was reassigned to the MIDNIGHT SONS line because everything connected with GHOST RIDER was such a huge success Doctor Druid became the new leader of the SECRET DEFENDERS and the less said about the rest the better.

There was a twelve issue series of the DEFENDERS by Kurt Busiek and Erik Larsen that I enjoyed followed by the 4 issue THE ORDER mini series which I missed, probably because Carlos Pacheco only did the covers.


Speaking about series where the less said is the better there was a five issue mini series by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire where the art was beautiful but the story was utter shite. Because what works with the stiff DC characters doesn´t work with Marvel characters who can be funny and neurotic when they are written normal so trying to do a funny version of that funny version makes them come off as whiny, egoistical morons. Which doesn´t prompt people to buy it. I swear there was one funny joke in the complete series and I even had to have that one explained to me by my brother. So if somebody want to sell you these issues beat him like a dog and then run like the devil was after your soul.

After the events of CIVIL  WAR there are two teams of Defenders, one formed by Tony Stark who is so hellbent on not using any former members that he has to disband it for incompetence ( way to go Tony ) and one that Nighthawk assembles. In Dale Keown´s HULK series there was a reunion of the original team during the OFFENDERS storyline in which they have to go up against Red Hulk, Baron Mordo, Terrax and Tiger Shark.


It´s around this time that Brian Michael Bendis decides to apply the concept of the Secret Defenders to his New Avengers series by making Luke Cage and Iron Fist - and later on Jessica Jones - part of the team.

So like I said the new series that incorporates Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones was better off as the New Avengers since they all were actually a longer time on this team then the Defenders. But I guess Disney doesn´t want to confuse the movie goers with Avengers and New Avengers and for whatever reason don´t want to go with Heroes for Hire.

And with that we are back to Matt Fraction´s DEFENDERS which is going to be what the tv writers base their series on. There was THE FEARLESS DEFENDERS but writer Cullen Bunn explained there was little connection to the Defenders beyond the name. I hope all this was helpful to understand who the Defenders are and that they are NOT the Heroes for Hire people.

YOU SAY DREADLOX I SAY DALEKS, YOU SAY DOCTOR I SAY PROFESSOR

So in POWER MAN AND IRON FIST 79 our heroes cross paths with the good Doctor although at that time I had no idea who this Doctor Who was so I didn´t get all the little hints. Now in 1982 when this story came out Marvel was already publishing DOCTOR WHO comics but for some reason they decided to make an inofficial crossover. Possibly because there would have been a lot of problems involved if they had to coordinate the story with the BBC and it´s always easier to be forgiven than to get allowance.


So I had no idea what a Dalek was when I saw the splash page of issue 79.


In the story they are called Dreadlox and they are machines that are used in a broadway play called Day of the Dredlox not Day of the Daleks and the lead actor is two time oscar winner Robert Diamond playing time traveling Professor Gamble and who looks like a young version of Jon Pertwee.


Some old geezers like me may know Bob Diamond as a former member of the Sons of the Tigers who appeared in the DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU magazine and who has become part of the book as Daniel Rand´s sparring partner and Coleen Wing´s love interest after the team has disbanded.

Now to quote Chris Sims´s post Bizarro Back Issues : Power Man and Iron Fist battle the Daleks ( Sort of ) ( 1982 ) the play is about a bunch of space robots that menace a Victorian gentleman, scholar, eccentric and the scourge of evil mechanical monster everywhere. Sound familiar ?

Bob Diamond hires the team to look into some very strange going ons surrounding the play and Luke thinks this is just some kind of publicity stunt until he and Fist are at the receiving end of some Dalek .... I mean Dredlox blaster rays. While the robots try to " Incinerate ! Incinerate ! " them our beleaguered heroes have to find refuge in a nearby book store.  


Which is naturally bigger on the inside and the base of operations of the real Professor Gamble. As it turns out he wrote the play when he needed money not taking into account that the Dredlox might use it to come to New York undetected once they learned how to break through the time barrier. While our hired heroes are discussing the ramifications of time travel the Dredlox kidnap Bob Diamond and the other cast members.


As Professor Gamble explains the Dredlox mistook Bob Diamond for him since they have no idea how much he has changed in the last ninety - five years. Yeah, I´m thinking at least two regenerations, maybe three tops.

Which Doctor he´s supposed to be is a bit hard to say since he seems a bit of an amalgam of different versions. His absent minded manner and constant fidgeging reminds me a bit of Tom Baker´s version which is the iconic one since he was the Doctor for the longest time but he doesn´t have a scarf and his look goes more into the Patrick Troughton Doctor.


As always the Dredlox have trouble with their time machine so they got the one who they thought is the Doctor to fix their equipment but they got the wrong one. The only thing Bob Diamond could do is karate kick their time machine until it works which is what the Doctor often does.

Anyway, Professor Gamble has cobbled together a gizmo ( notice my precise techno babble ) to send the Dredlox back to their time but he needs Power Man and Iron Fist to create a distraction. In the end the Professor´s machine works, the Dredlox vanish as does the book store because ... it was a time machine that only looked like a book store. 


When I first read this it was only a weird and fun story but now that I know all the hints it´s a great story that shows what a cool book this is.

Sadly this was Kerry Gamill´s last issue on the title but what a note to go out on. And according to Mathew Peterson´s Retro Review of the issue at MAJOR SPOILERS ( which provided most of the art for this part ) our good Professor Justin Alphonse Gamble had another appearance at Marvel. So this is the end of my post on Tom Baker´s birthday which had a lot more Defenders stuff in it than doctor Who stuff but we will return to Patrick Troughton in my upcoming review of DOCTOR WHO VERSUS DRACULA.

There are two links I have to add. Paul O´Connor at LONGBOX GRAVEYARD has a long post about Iron Fist for those who want more background info on the character and Brian Cronin at COMIC BOOK RESOURCES goes into the many deaths and resurrections of Iron First which is - naturally - full of spoilers. So don´t read this before reading the actual comic books.

Now I have to mention Todays other celebrity birthday person, sex bomb Stacey Dash, who appeared in such movies like MO MONEY, GETTING PLAYED and ILLEGAL IN BLUE but is best known for starring in the movie CLUELESS and repeating her role in the television version of the movie.


Stacey is really the only reason to watch the CLUELESS tv series since she busted out on that show. Sadly she waited with posing for PLAYBOY until she was 40 years old although her pictures still turned out pretty hot. She turns 49 on this very day and it was not easy finding a good clip with her.


It seems she´s in the news mostly because of her strange political views than anything else and I have to ask me what went wrong here. I mean, one moment she´s the überhot sex symbol who made all male viewers instantly hard on CLUELESS, she went naked in movies like TENNESSE NIGHTS and even posed naked for PLAYBOY and now what ? That´s crazy.


Anyway, I found the clip below with a nice outfit which has nothing to do with politics. Here´s hoping that there will be better times until your next birthday Stacey Dash, many happy returns and thanks for the mammaries.



Since this is still a comic blog I wanted to post a video with Tom Baker about comics so here is part four of the Stripped for Action docu series.



This is a video I wanted to post for the longest time but kept putting it off : Amy Dallen recommends comics for Whovians which for some reason does not include POWER MAN AND IRON FIST 79. This is an outrage !



Since I mentioned Steve Gerber and Howard the Duck here´s a video about how Steve Gerber stole his creation back from Marvel. Which means he was never in Guardians of the Galaxy. That was his clone.



Our last birthday is DeForrest Kelley who played Dr Leonard McCoy on STAR TREK. He was my first McCoy before the Beast on the X - Men even if his nickname " Bones " was changed to " Pill " in the german version.


Another problem was that the episodes were cut or other episodes that dealt with Nazi Germany were not shown on tv. Which made it necessary to dub these parts for the new Blue Ray releases but since they didn´t have the original voice actors anymore these parts have different voices now. Here is a musical video to recall all the great moments of the 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


He´s dead Jim.

Today is Bill Bixby´s birthday whom many may know from My Favorite Martian ( which I knew as My Uncle from Mars since that was what it was called in the german version where it had a totally different title song ), The Courtship of Eddie´s Father or The Magician. For me he´s always been Doctor David Banner from The Hulk and as I have no real recollection of the other tv shows I wanted to do a Hulk - centric post.


Which as longtime readers may have already guessed is something that has to do with comic books. And in this case with french comic books.

If you have read my description of the blog in the blog header picture ( and I don´t expect many readers have as I received two questions this week in the comment section that could have been answered by just reading the post in question so nobody really reads anything on this blog ) you may notice that my mission statement there says that I write about the translated versions of comics but which I don´t do that often now.

Which is mostly due to a lack of the necessary resources. I´ve already mentioned that I " read " most of the Len Wein / Sal Buscema / Ernie Chan issues of THE INCREDIBLE HULK in GAMMA, the french version published by Artima in my post This Man This Monster Secret Cover Monday . But so far all I had to compare the issues to were the german issues of DIE SPINNE, where these stories appeared as a back up and which had some of the pages missing. That would have been a half hearted post at best but now that I have volume 6 of ESSENTIAL HULK ( which is the first one of this series you should buy because if you only buy one this should be it ) I can actually find out everything the french publisher left out. Now I don´t want people to misunderstand me, I´m not trying to bash the french edition as none of the foreign editions are perfect, least of all the german editions. But I thought this might be interesting for readers of the original versions who have never seen a foreign edition. And for reference sake since I haven´t seen this kind of post on the internet. I´m not going to comment on the translation as my french is not good enough for that but judging from the machine lettering and the empty space in the word balloons a lot was left out there too.


I tried to include all missing pages but I could not find them all.

GAMMA 19 - COLOSSES EN FURIE ( COLOSSUS FOAMING WITH RAGE )

12 Francs, 68 pages, thick non glossy paper, cardboard cover

All three issues of GAMMA I have come with ads for other comics but this is the only one where they are in color, the other ads are white and blue.

inside front cover ad for ARAK, L´ ESCADRON DES ETOILES ( All Star Squadron ), LE MANOIR DES FANTOMES and LES GEANTS DES SUPER - HEROS : ZATANNA ET BATMAN ( The Brave and The Bold 169 cover )


reprinting Incredible Hulk 214 to 217

issue 214 page 10 missing - this page ( and possibly another ) was also missing in the german version. When I read the ESSENTIAL I finally found out that Hulk was not as clumsy as I thought because in the german version he falls on his face after falling on his ass. The truth was that Jack of Hearts hit him again and then dodged the Hulk´s counter attack.


issue 215 cover, page 14 and 15 missing - 2 pages of the Hulk chasing after Thunderbolt Ross before the Hulk finally corners him. They probably cut this because it is not essential to the story but this way Ross comes off as an old fart who gets a heart attack from Hulk staring angrily at him

issue 216 cover, page 2 and 5 missing - with page 2 missing Hulk comes off as a bit of a wuss since he immediately goes through the trap door


page 5 is subplot with Doc Samson and the Leader for the following issues


issue 217 cover missing - besides the one on the cover all the original covers are missing, I´m only mentioning it for the statistic lovers

inside back cover ad for LA LIGE DE JUSTICE ( Justice League ), LES JEUNES TITANS ( New Teen Titans ), HULK : POWER MAN ET IRON FIST and LES VENGEURS ( Avengers ), back cover ad for LES MICRONAUTES

GAMMA 20 - LA PROIE DES PIRATES ( THE PIRATES´ BOUNTY )

8 Francs, 68 pages, regular paper, thinner cardboard cover


inside front cover ad for WARLORD, LA LÉGENDE DE STAR - LORD, L´ EPÉE DU DEMON and GUÉRILLA pour MISS HULK ( Savage She Hulk )


reprinting Incredible Hulk 218 to 221

issue 218 cover, page 16 missing - one page of the Doc Samson / Rhino fight. Not really important storywise since Doc Samson is a wuss anyway

issue 219 page 1 missing - now this is a really hard blow for art fans. How can you cut such a beautiful spash page ? These guys are the best.


issue 220 cover, page 1 missing - see comment above


issue 221 cover, page 1 missing - beautiful splash inks by Alfredo Alcala


inside back cover ad for LE MOTARD FANTOME ( Ghost Rider ), DRACULA LE VAMPIRE, LES MICRONAUTES and GAMMA 19 : COLOSSES EN FURIE


back cover ad for already published issues of the GAMMA series

GAMMA 21 - L´ ÉTRE RADIOACTIF ( THE RADIOACTIVE BEING )

8 Francs, 68 pages, regular paper, thinner cardboard cover

inside front cover ad for LA LÉGENDE DE STAR - LORD, DRACULA LE VAMPIRE, DEFENSEURS, CAPTAIN CAROTTE ET SON FABULEUX ZOO CLUB


reprinting Incredible Hulk 222 to 225

issue 222 pages 15 and 16 missing - almost the entire fight between the Hulk and Billy has been cut. In the french version the Hulk gets punched two times in close succession and then the grotto caves in


issue 223 cover missing

issue 224 cover, pages 2 and 3 missing - it seems the french cut everything that was not necessary to the story as this gives a bit of background information about what happened to the Leader before


issue 225 cover, page 12 and the last panel on page 17 missing - one page of Doc Samson and Hulk fighting the Humanoids. The final panel was probably cut because it has the cliffhanger for the next issue. Since I don´t have the next issue - or any info if there WAS a next issue - I don´t know how they resolved this. The page appeared like it is shown below.


inside back cover ad for LES MICRONAUTES, LE MOTARD FANTOME, WARLORD and LES JEUNES TITANS, back cover ad for Pope Jean Paul II


So that´s all that is to be said about these issues and I hope it wasn´t too boring since there may be a few more of these post coming in the future.

There are a few websites to thank without whom I could not have done this post. Some of the missing pages were provided by A.R.C.H.I.V.E. and THE INCREDIBLE HULK LIBRARY while most of the cover by Arédit Artima were found on the always reliable GRAND COMICS DATABASE website.


Link time : INTERNET 451 has a post on Ernie Chan, Brian Cronin at COMIC BOOK RESOURCES sheds some light on the rumor that Bill Bixby starred in a She Hulk pilot, JOHN BIERLY has some interviews with people who have worked with Bill Bixby and THE FLAMING NOSE TV BLOG did a long post on him last year with a lot of videos so I can skip that part. Now I have to put all the pictures of french comic covers I got while making this post in the folders but not without posting a few videos of my own.

Thanks to John Hurt, who celebrates his 76th birthday Today, I can put a Doctor Who clip onto the post. He has played a lot of different roles but to all future generations he will now forever be known as the War Doctor.



Today is just full of interesting birthdays and if I had known that Conan creator Robert E. Howard and porn star Ava Devine were born on this day this would have been a very different post. Anyway, Today is also the 61st birthday of John Wesley Shipp, best know to people of my generation as the Flash in the far to short lived 90s tv series. The younger audience knows him as Barry Allen´s Dad from the new Flash tv show and originally I wanted to post this video from the old show but the embedding has been disabled. So instead here is a video from COMIC MISCONCEPTIONS about the Green Arrow tv show that was supposed to spin out of the 90s Flash.



I wanted to include the Hulk in some kind of animated capacity so here are the Top Ten Animated Superhero TV Series which - for obvious reasons - does neither include Avengers Assemble nor Agents of S.M.A.S. H. but instead Avengers - Earth´s Mightiest Heroes which has the best portrayal of the Hulk on tv for a long time. Some of their candidates are a bit odd like the awful Teen Titans cartoon but there are some good ones in here.



The last birthday I´m going to mention is Sam Cooke so this is for Sam.



I wanted to include another cosplay video so I chose this one which is rather new. Man, every time I think I am ready to treat the subject of cosplaying professionally and objective Yaya goes and wears something like this and turns me back into a drooling, uncontrollably horny idiot.


Even if her part is rather short ( I never what she´s cosplaying as and have to check out her website to find out who Junko Enoshima is ) but stunning as always and there are a lot of other cosplayers - male and female - in the clip with great costumes especially the Steampunk guys. I have watched a few of these the last few days because while I don´t know if I am going to cosplay at Erlangen now is the time to get inspired.



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

Since she´s celebrating her 42nd birthday Today I wanted to re - post my entry about television cult siren Tiffani Amber Thiessen ( Thyssen ? ).


You see ? I always get this confused. I think it used to be Thyssen but because she didn´t want the Hollywood people to known she had german ancestors she later changed it to Thiessen. Or maybe that´s just the way they wrote her name in Germany. Anyway, this fastlaning sexbomb - who has the best natural breasts in Hollywood according to Howard Stern - has been scorching the tv screen for quite some time with her curvaceous hardbody and her big 37DD Beverly Hills to the delight of males worldwide.


As this is a re - post I tried to make it shorter but as always it turned out longer than the original post. If you want to see more GIFs of Tiffani Amber Thiessen, Tori Spelling and Elizabeth Berkley just click here .

I never was a big fan of the BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 show but that quickly changed when I saw wet Tiffani Thiessen´s booming breasts in a bikini.


Well, that and later Tori Spelling´s sexy dance in a skimpy leather outfit. If you can call her wild fertility inducing movements dancing. She really was just shaking her big boobs in the general direction of the camera.


But that she did very effectively. I never was a big Tori Spelling fan but in that scene she really squeezed her breast into a tight leather top and just pushed them straight in your face. Now that´s what I call entertainment. In that episode her prude boyfriend ( I thought he was played by Tom Welling from SMALLVILLE but that´s not him ) sees Tori getting filmed while shaking her ass like a total prostitute and he gets totally pissed off.

What a dork. If you see your girl doing a sexy dance like that you don´t get jealous or angry. You tell her : " You´re fantastic babe. And you know what ? You don´t need to change before coming home. Bring your tight leather outfit, the handcuffs and the dog collar, bring the heavy metal soundtrack and we will make our own private sex recording session. "

Man, if she got such stripper skills you should have her using them on you. And I´m sure shaking her ass and boobs is not the only thing she does like a total prostitute. Dude, I´m not a huge Tori Spelling fan but if I had caught her somewhere in that tight leather hooker outfit when I was at my sexual prime I would have given it to her until I´m pumped dry !


What I find a bit strange is how did such a scene get approved when her father was producing this ? Should I be concerned that Daddy dearest put it in the script or does this say more about his employees. Maybe some disgruntled writers just decided to put his boss´ daughter into a hooker outfit and let her dance for him as payback for sleeping with his wife.

" Okay, Tori, do you think you can move more like a prostitute ? And we need to make the outfit sluttier. This is supposed to be a rock video. " 

Here´s the clip of that scene from episode 27 of season 6 STRIKE THE MATCH. I don´t think it will be long on YouTube so I made a few GIFs.



It´s in one of the two DVD sets I bought a while ago. The complete seasons have been pretty expensive for the longest time - between 40 and 50 bucks - so when they released them in two parts for under 10 bucks each I got the two most important ones. Of course now they have released new DVD collections where you get complete seasons for around 15 bucks so I have to see if I can still find the other part of the seasons I bought for less than what they now charge for a complete season. Damn.

One thing about BEVERLY HILLS that cracked me up were all the imagined problems these poor rich kids had. Because let´s face it, the rich kids may have problems too but at least they don´t have to worry about where they are going to sleep or where their next meal is coming from. Oh, my Dad won´t let me use the Mercedes and now I have to drive the Porsche to school. Or Brandon who always preferred his integrity to living in the real world. But the funniest episode - I really laughed out loud during this one - was when one of the kids realized that he became a drug addict. " But I can´t be a drug addict. Only poor people get addicted to drugs ! " 

Anyway, I now had two ( or was that four ? ) reasons to watch the show.



But while Tori got her big breasts from Daddy´s money Tiffani got hers from Mother nature. The show is always on reruns but I always miss it.

Nonetheless here is one of the most memorable scenes with Tiffani.


On an episode of Beverly Hills ( episode 28 of the 8th season in Amerika and for some reason episode 27 in Germany ) Tiffani falsely thinks her boyfriend is sexually bored and buys supersexy lingerie and a bag of sextoys. But since she is mistaken her boyfriend is rather scared of her.


In real life he would be all over her. I mean, if a sexbomb with such huge hooters like Tiffani would be in my bedroom wearing black lingerie and telling me : " I´m ready for anything. ANYTHING !" ....... holy makarel !


Again, here´s the clip with that scene from YouTube :



Tiffani Thiessen also starred in SAVED BY THE BELL but I didn´t watch many episodes of the show. Even if both she and her co - star Elizabeth Berkley developed into supersexy bombshells. I remember my younger brother always watched it - they did marathons on Saturday mornings during the summer vacations in Spain - but I think I was always too busy with important stuff like reading comics or drawing superheroes or such.


That´s a big part of pop culture I really never had access to so I don´t have fond memories of Tiffani Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley from that.

Man, who could have thought they´d turn into such ultimate sexbombs ?

Especially Elizabeth Berkley showed some impressive hip thrusting skills in SHOWGIRLS. I bet this was useful when she was auditioned for the part with her fold - out casting couch that she carries with her anywhere.


Although widely labeled a " flop " the movie more than made its money back on video and DVD sales. I mean who is going to see a movie in the cinema where you want to rewind or see some scenes in slow motion ?


So even as SHOWGIRLS was considered a really bad movie by critics ( yeah, and we all know how much they know about movies ) when it came out it was still shown constantly on television the following years and landed on the top ten list of best movie striptease which made it one of the top guilty pleasures of movie fans. Due to a fan following that has only grown wider with the years it has even reached trash cult status.


I really have to thank Paul Verhoeven for discovering Elizabeth Berkley´s dormant stripper qualities. We always knew she was absolutely hot but who could imagine what a natural born pornstar she would turn out to be ?


But back to Tiffani. In BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 Tiffani Amber Thiessen ( I´m still referring to her as Tiffani Amber Thiessen although she goes with just Tiffani Thiessen now - maybe because her initials were TAT and she was tired of all the" tit for tat "or" tat got tits "or" tat´s big tats "jokes ) often wore bikinis or at least bikini tops or had to dress up as a prostitute because the script ( = the drooling director ) demanded it.


Those directors got it made, they just go "Okay guys, in the next four episodes Tiffani dresses up as a prostitute. And she has to do at least one striptease and two nude sex scenes in each episode. Which is really necessary for her character. Oh yeah, and send her to my trailer for .... extreme rehearsal. We have to go over the scene ... orally." Those horny perverts are to thank for that Tiffani was so often in bikinis on that show.


As for movies with Tiffani, I have seen SHE FOUGHT ALONE ( where her ex - boyfriend and BEVERLY HILLS co - star Brian Austin Green played a role ), which is your run of the mill rape drama although Tiffani has some good scenes in it, SWEET DREAMS, where she is topless but still covered and you can almost see a nipple and her strip in SON IN LAW is really the only reason to watch the movie. Unless you´re a huge Pauly Shore fan.


The movie was called SCHWIEGERSON JUNIOR in Germany because Yahho Serious´ EINSTEIN JUNIOR had just been a huge success in the cinemas. There are two Tiffani Thiessen movies on my " to watch " list and the first one is THE LADIES MAN also starring THE FRESH PRINCE´s Karyn Parsons.


I don´t know anything about the movie besides some clips I´ve seen but it has Tiffani in lingerie so I´m already sold. What more do you need ?


The other is HOLLYWOOD ENDING and I don´t know much more about that movie except that Woody Allen plays a role opposite Tiffani Thiessen. And that´s really all I can say about Tiffani Thiessen as I´m sure part of my readership is already appalled by this. The rest of you might want to check out THE 33 SEXIEST TIFFANI AMBER THIESSEN GIFs I found on this site. In any case, thanks for the mammaries and many happy returns !


I thought I had to post just comic related videos in this section but now that I already posted that I couldn´t find the videos on YouTube they are up again. But since you never know how long they will last - and it took a lot of work making these GIFs and looking on the internet for them - the GIFs are going to stay on the post. And the videos are not good quality.

The first one is a compilation will all the best of Tiffani Amber Thiessen.



I know that this video will at least make one reader happy. Here´s the always radiant Kelly Rowland with Lay It On Me featuring Big Sean.



Last year I posted my first video about bellydancer Didem Kinali and I thought I had already posted this one. But like usual that was a mistake and I have only posted one other clip of her. So here is another one.



I finally managed to watch the 2016 Golden Globes Awards and one of the highlights was Rachel Bloom and not only because of her massive globes.


These award show are where I can get info on all the new tv shows that come out at such a breakneck pace that it´s hard to keep up with them. So this win has clearly put Rachel Bloom and Crazy Ex - Girlfriend on the map. It´s one of these shows I never heard about and I would not have watched since on german tv you get drowned in relationship comedy.



Now I swear I am totally innocent where the next clip is concerned since I found it by chance while looking for something completely different. But once I had seen Gemma Arterton´s epic cleavage I just had to post it.


You may know Gemma Arterton from such movies like HÄNSEL AND GRETEL - WITCH HUNTERS ( which was not as bad as I expected ) and the red carpet event is the 2015 Olivier Awards , a theater award 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
 

Since Today is the 86th birthday of John Romita I wanted to continue my posts about the oversized MARVEL VISIONARY hardcovers from the 2000s.


Like I said in previous installments one of the reasons why I want to write about these books is that the prices for comics have seriously gone up in the last years especially any series that is connected - or people believe is connected - to movies. Especially with Disney making the jump to 4.99 for their books pretty soon this topic is more important than ever.

Because if you are a fan of John Romita´s AMAZING SPIDER - MAN issues there is an omnibus, several MASTER MASTERWORKS and ESSENTIALS out as well as two ARTIST`S EDITIONs for those who prefer black and white.


But except for the ESSENTIALS those books will cost you an arm and a leg and the ESSENTIALS are not in color. There are very few trades out there from this stuff and the ones that exist collect issues from all over the series. And with Disney doing the omnibus books the only chance for a paperback will be the Epic Collections which are not exactly cheap.

Okay, the MARVEL VISIONARIES : JOHN ROMITA SR book is not really a cheap book with its cover price of 29.99 dollars but for that you get an oversized hardcover with 336 glossy pages which is almost three times the page count of what you get in a regular 24.99 hardcover from Disney nowadays. What´s more, because there is no buzz about these books you can get them at a good price. I got my copy from the new and used books section at amazon for 14 bucks and I just checked : right now you can get it for 10 EUR and that includes shipping and handling. So this is doable. 


Now the color restoration is not as good as in the MARVEL MASTERWORKS and the printing on some of the issues in the MARVEL VISIONARIES books is not so good but all the issues in this book are good or even terrific.

Speaking about the issues, like with the previous books the selection in this book can be odd at first glance but you have to keep in mind that the makers of the book tried to strike a balance between what has already been reprinted in other books, what are important issues and what are absolutely indispensable issues. Like in the MARVEL VISIONARIES : CHRIS CLAREMONT book they had to include The Death of Jean Grey because not only is it the best X - Men story ever written it is one of THE best comic book stories period. And you can´t do a book that is supposed to be a retrospective of Chris Claremont´s work without including this. So in the same way the John Romita Sr book collects some indispensable comics, some important issues he has worked on and some other oddities. And speaking about oddities we start the book with some of John Romita´s pre - Marvel work with the stories It ! from STRANGE TALES 4 and Flying Saucer ! from MENACE 6, followed by two Captain America stories from YOUNG MEN 24 and 25, I, The Robot ! from MENACE 11 - with the killer robot M11 who ended up in AGENTS OF ATLAS - and WESTERN KID 12.


Next we enter the Marvel age with a Hulk story from TALES TO ASTONISH 77 and a Captain America story from TALES OF SUSPENSE 77. The art in these stories is already much different than in the preceding issues and you can already see much of his style in issues 16 and 17 of DAREDEVIL, the first time he drew Spider - Man. This story was a test run for Stan Lee who wanted to see how John Romita Sr handled the character.

In the issues there is the usual Marvel misunderstanding where the heroes end up fighting each other during which Daredevil gives Spider - Man the slip. Which is not such a great idea because Spider - Man follows him to the law offices of Nelson & Murdock where he uncovers Daredevil´s secret identity : Foggy Nelson ! What ? Come on, his spider sense tells him that Daredevil is there and it can´t possibly be the girl or the blind man, duh. 


Today John Romita is the artist most comic fans from my generation associate with Spider - Man ( with Today´s generation it´s probably somebody like Humberto Ramos, Ryan Stegman or Giuseppe Camuncoli ) but when he started on the book he was hoping it would not work out.

He didn´t believe somebody would leave a title that was as successful as AMAZING SPIDER - MAN so he still tried to draw in Steve Ditko´s style in issues 39 and 40, the first Spider - Man issues here which are classic stories. Besides being the regular artist for the title John Romita also did most of the covers for this period of which many have become iconic covers in pop culture that have been homaged over and over again.


If you have read any of the posts on this blog about My Spider - Man you know that while I also had read all of Steve Ditko´s Spider - Man the one I really loved was John Romita´s version. His Spider - Man was heroic and imposing, not as creepy and weird as Ditko´s version and his women - oh my god - it made you want to get into the comic books to ask them out.


Anyway, that was MY Spider - Man with Mary Jane as a go go dancer, the Kingpin as a major Spider - Man villain, the Prowler ( who was designed by John Romita Jr ) but most of all the maggia villains like Hammerhead, Silverman and Manmountain Marko ( his german name Menschenberg always sounded too much like Meatball to me ). One of my favorite stories from that period is The Stone Tablet Saga from issues 68 to 75.


I don´t remember everything from those issues but the gist of it is that the Kingpin and Silvio " Silvermane " Manfredi - who was first introduced in these issues - are after a mysterious stone tablet that is on display in Peter Parker´s high school. During a student riot which introduces Robbie Robertson´s son Randy the stone tablet is stolen by the Kingpin´s goons which is just the start of endless turns in which Spider - Man has to battle one villain after another because of another misunderstanding with the press or to get the stone tablet back. In the finale Silvermane finally gets hold of the stone tablet and kidnaps Doctor Curt Connors to decipher it.


As it turns out the stone tablet holds the secret formula of eternal youth and Doctor Connors is forced to make a serum for Silvermane who is restored to his former youth and then goes off to settle some scores.


This leads to an epic free - for - all brawl between Spider - Man, the Lizard, Man Mountain Marko, Silvermane and dozen of his goons during which Silvermane keeps getting younger until there´s nothing left of him.


It´s one of the stories that shows what´s so great about the Spider - Man series with the return of the Kingpin as a force to be reckoned with, the introduction of new characters, more gangsters and hoodlums than you can shake a stock at, the Kingpin " outing " Spider - Man as his partner in crime, Spider - Man threatening John Jonah Jameson who gets a heart attack because of this, Quicksilver trying to arrest Spider - Man to prove his worth to the Avengers and all kind of melodrama. On top of that you have political problems with the student riots, something that was not that common in comics at that time and the father son conflict between Robbie and his son Randy ( I bet Randy Robertson was Robbie´s nickname during his college years ) which is not only a generational conflict but Randy also calls his father an Uncle Tom because he works for Whitey.


Anyway, because the sheer volume of this story would have totalled this book which is supposed to be about John Romita´s work none of the issues have been included here. I would have liked to re - read the story but I can support Marvel´s decision not to include some stories out of context. Instead they chose to go with single issues and two issue arcs.

Like AMAZING SPIDER - MAN 39 and 40 which had the final confrontation between Spider - Man and the Green Goblin. Well, at that time it was the final confrontation but later on they brought him back a few times even from the dead. In the story not only does the Green Goblin kidnap Spider - Man and discover his secret identity the readers also for the first time saw the face beneath the Goblin Mask which was none other than Norman Osborn, the father of Peter Parker´s classmate Norman Osborn. This was eleven years before the first STAR WARS movie came out so the whole " it´s the father " thing was a real shocker for the readers. 

senior

In honor of Geoff Johns´ 43rd birthday Today I wanted to do a long post about his best comics - all pre NEW 52 - but as always I slept for most of the day ( after spending the first six hours of the day finishing the John Romita Sr post ) so instead I´m going to hit four birds with one stone by posting the first issue of FINAL CRISIS : LEGION OF THREE WORLDS.


Now you´re probably asking yourself why four birds ? Well, the answer is number : I get to post something related to Geoff Johns on his birthday and not any story but one of his best. Number two is I get to post more George Perez art and if you have read more than three posts on this blog you already know that Perez is my art god. Number three is I get to post something related to the greatest comic series of all time, the Legion of Super - Heroes. And number four is because I always try to give these posts a little extra oooomph I´m posting some of the original pages. 


Now Legion of Three Worlds was a five issue mini series that started in October 2008 and like it happens with most of George Perez´ work some of the issues took a bit longer to come out then they were supposed to.

Issue 2 came out in November 2008 and issue 3 came out in April 2009. But you knew it was not because he was lazy, quite the opposite and when issue 3 came out you could see all the extra work he had put in. Which is why nobody bothered as much as if had been another artist. I don´t know how other comic readers handled it but because money is always a factor I don´t mind if some issues take longer to come out. I saved them up so I could binge read the whole story anyway. I also got the hardcover when it came out and when Today´s kids read it they have no idea how long it took for some issues to come out. They just know that it looks terrific. Or they go : " Oh, this looks old school. How boring. " Anyway, unlike INFINITE CRISIS the FINAL CRISIS main comic is something you should try to avoid. While DC laid the seeds for INFINITE CRISIS for three years and every new lead - in title to the main series was better than the last one FINAL CRISIS happens very ad hoc and seems more like an afterthought. So even if it has some nice art by Carlos Pacheco it is not a very good story. The main story. The tie - in series are another beast altogether. I haven´t read FINAL CRISIS : ROGUE`S REVENGE yet - mainly because of Scott Kolins awful art - but I have heard good things about the story.

So if you are a George Perez fan or a Legion fan or a Superman fan or a Teen Titans fan or a Flash fan or just like to read good comics here´s one of Geoff Johns´ best stories from back when he still had the magic touch.


long live

This post has been long overdue but with all the everyday stuff I never got around to do the follow up to my post on cukt siren Tura Satana ( which I just gave the big overhaul ) and since Today would have been her 70th birthday here is my remembrance of the great Russ Meyer star Haji.


Now when I say "my remembrance " I have to mention that I did have a bit of help on writing this post especially in the biographic part since I´m not that well versed in all the facts of Haji´s personal life. So I had to look up a few sources and as usual I will put them in the link section.

With her wicked oriental eyes and over the top french accent, the well - endowed exotic dancer ( in every sense of the term ) simply known as Haji was the spunkiest and most exotic of famed sexploitation director Russ Meyer’s stars. Sexy and dangerous, Haji was a reoccurring favorite in five of his features, as well as in grindhouse cinema throughout the late sixties and early seventies, and despite disappearing from public life by the early 80s she managed to maintain and cultivate a cult following throughout her life. She also claimed to have once been engaged to Frank Gorshin, who played The Riddler in the 1960s’ tv series of Batman.


Born Barbarella Catton in Quebec in 1946, she was, she said, the " love child " of a philandering Filipino father, who was married, and a mother of English and Irish ancestry. Nicknamed Haji by her uncle, the painter William Downes, she had no hang - ups about sex or nudity. " I was taught that the body is like a goddess. Nudity is beautiful, " said the actress, who made the most of her other - worldly appearance. " I think I was sent here from another galaxy as an experiment, to observe you earthlings. " After growing up in Washington and New York, she became a single mother at 15 and moved to California to bring up her daughter, Cerlette.

Like Meyer's subsequent leading ladies, Erica Gavin and Kitten Natividad, Haji was discovered by the " King of the Nudies " while working as a dancer. She had started dancing when she was 14, and quickly moved to California to ply her trade in strip clubs, keeping quiet about her age. Her speciality dance was to The Girl From Ipanema. From 1962, she had a residency at The Losers, a Los Angeles strip club that gained its name from a changing billboard outside, identifying an unpopular name in the news; “ losers of the week ” included Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro.


Haji likened it to “ a Las Vegas revue show ”, and she was second in importance among the club’s dancers, the first place belonging to the even more imposing Tura Satana. Their relationship repeated itself in Faster, Pussycat; at one point the third Pussycat claims the pair “ make the Mafia look like Brownies ”.  Haji had no acting experience and didn't mind the basic conditions and non - existent budgets on her first three Meyer movies. " We would sleep in tents, we used outhouses, " she recalled. " I'd always have to watch for snakes and scorpions. We showered under a barrel of freezing water and we watched our own outfits every night by hand. I thought everyone did films this way. Then I went to 20th Century Fox to do Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls and they did your hair and make - up, they feed you, they dress you. But I'm glad I learned from the Russ Meyer school. He taught me how to be a soldier ."


In Motor Psycho, her 1965 acting debut, she was the wonderfully named Ruby Bonner, a widow hellbent on avenging the murder of her husband.

One of Russ Meyer’s most underrated films, Motor Psycho is the gritty tale of a country veterinarian who seeks revenge on a trio of bikers who rape his voluptuous wife, leaving her in a catatonic state. During his hunt he meets Ruby, a feisty Cajun woman, whose boorish traveling companion was murdered by the same bikers, and she joins forces with the vet to find vengeance in a climatic stand off in the Nevada desert.


While overshadowed by Meyer’s more colourful films, Motor Psycho is a fast paced thriller, and possibly one of Meyer’s best films. In her debut Haji became the standout player in picture, and it can be argued that Ruby was her richest part, and Haji gave her most dynamic performance. While Meyer’s female characters were often more powerful than the male characters throughout all of his films, Ruby was the first of Russ Meyer’s woman to be truly considered dangerous. She spat, she slapped and she cursed, but there was no doubt that this french she - wolf was all woman.


Haji made a big impression on Meyer during the making of Motor Psycho, and would end up not only being one of Meyer’s most frequently used actresses, but also worked in makeup, casting and costuming for many of his productions. The actor Charles Napier remembered her as “ a little distracting - she used to do make - up with only sneakers on ”.

Possibly the reason that Motor Psycho has been tragically over looked was that the same year Meyer filmed and released his masterpiece Faster, Pussycat ! … Kill ! … Kill ! This time Haji was joined by Tura Satana and Lori Williams ( who both only made the one Meyer film ) as a trio of murderous hot rodding kick - ass go - go dancers wreaking havoc.


A symphony of sex and violence, Haji played Rosie, the right hand to the vicious leader of the gang, Varla. An edgier version of her previous character, Rosie was sharp tonged and quick with a switch blade, and Meyer worked lesbian undertones into Haji’s character, who was in love with her leather clad boss. Highlights included Haji’s catfight with Lori Williams, and her angst over Varla’s seduction of a autistic muscle man.


One of the most beautifully shot sexploitation films ever made, Russ Meyer made good use of his gorgeous cast and the desert landscape, proving that exploitation could be art. Although the film would be a lost gem at the time of its release, Faster Pussycat ! … Kill ! … Kill ! would be rediscovered in the 90’s and become one of the most beloved grindhouse films of all time, turning Haji into an immortal icon of the genre.


" You just didn't see women taking over and beating up men in those days, " Haji told fansite Ultravixens. " Russ did something no one else had the imagination to do. And he was smart to use three bodied up women, so whether the picture's good or not, you will sort of stare at it. "


Indeed, Faster, Pussycat has become a touchstone of popular culture, acclaimed by film - makers like John Waters and Quentin Tarantino, referenced in rock and pop by the Cramps, the Spice Girls and the Killers, and even hailed by some as a feminist tract.The movie also enjoys a big lesbian following. However, Haji admitted Meyer had kept her in the dark about the exact nature of her character Rosie's relationship with Varla.


" I didn't even know I was supposed to be a lesbian in the picture ! " she said. " I never saw any indication in the script and I never played it like Tura and I were in love ! When we came to that scene when I was crying because Tura was making out with that man, I didn't understand why I should be crying. As an actress, I just do as I'm directed. Russ should have told me that in the beginning, I might have played things a little differently. I thought she was just this tough chick that I didn't argue with, I felt she was more like my big sister. "


Russ Meyer cast her again as Sorceress in Good Morning ... and Goodbye ! ( Confessions of a Sexy Supervixen in the UK ) in 1967, and Haji made a “ blink and you’ll miss it ” cameo ( she played the model in Phyllis Davis’ studio who cages the photographer ) in Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, the satirical, cautionary tale of a female rock group in Hollywood, his 1970 major studio debut co - written by the film critic Roger Ebert.


Haji also discovered the buxom Shari Eubank in a Los Angeles night spot and in 1975 wound up alongside her playing SuperHaji, the waitress who wears little else but a smile and a few strategically placed stones, in SuperVixens, another of Meyer's most memorable movies. 


Her accent, and affinity with nature, led to a misunderstanding during the making of Good Morning ... and Goodbye in which she played The Sorceress, clad in the type of cavegirl bikini Raquel Welch had recently popularised. Asking what she had in what appeared to be a box of cookies, the assistant director George Costello misheard her reply as a “ snack ”, and put his hand inside - only to find a live snake. Terrified, Costello hurled it away, and in Haji’s words : “ The snake landed on the benches and was slithering on the seats. Everybody cleared out. ”

Haji continued to make appearances in other b - films throughout the 70’s, but because she was not one for the casting couch  she never found the same success as she did with Russ Meyer. Her career didn't progress beyond the schlock and sexploitation of Robert F. Slatzer’s forgettable monster film Bigfoot, featuring John Carradine, in the role of an Indian woman; she can be briefly seen in the 1975 sexploitation film Wham ! Bam ! Thank You Spaceman ! and in possibly her most degrading film, she played a harem girl in 1976’s Ilsa : Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, the second of the tasteless but legendary Ilsa films starring Dyanne Thorne.


The same year she made a brief appearance in John Cassavetes’ notable film The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which would be the best of her films from the era, but Haji slipped back into the sleazy side of cinema a year later for the porn movie The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. In 1981 Haji appeared in something called Demonoid : Messenger of Death, which would prove to be her final film for the next twenty years. In 2001 she teamed up with Meyer alumni Natividad and Raven De La Croix in the straight to video The Double - D Avenger.


She ran her fan club, made appearances at b - movie conventions and burlesque events and also enjoyed looking after her granddaughter and rescuing greyhounds. She never married. " Men always seem to want to put you in cage. Or change you, " she said. Tempus Fugit.

To make this post I had to look up a lot of information and the Haji orbituary at INDEPENDENT filled up a lot of the gaps. Also helpful was Sam Tweedle´s a tribute to Haji on CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT which has a lot of other interesting posts like The Deadliest Pussycat of Them All : A Conversation with Tura Satana and A Tribute to Tura Satana.


Chris Poggiali on SHOCK CINEMA has an interview with Haji , of course there is an entry about Tura Satana on the CULT SIRENS website and for more about Russ Meyer´s cult movies David Kalat at MOVIE MORLOCKS has a post on Faster Pussycat called Tura Satana vs The World and Alfred Aker covers Supervixens and Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens .


I don´t think Russ Meyer´s movies are in the public domain but you can find most of them on YouTube. A lot of them have nudity which makes them NSFW so I´ll post Motor Psycho for those who still haven´t seen it.



Here´s a nice video with the other women from Russ Meyer movies.



Speaking about Russ Meyer movies Schlager singer Antonia aus Tirol ( real name Sandra Stumptner ) surely has the necessary qualities to have starred in one of them even if I could not confirm her exact cupsize.



I can however say that russian singer, snow dancer and designer Anna Semenovich clocks in at a whopping 43E ! Not only would she be right at home in a Russ Meyer movie, she´s a perfect candidate for my SEARCH FOR POWER GIRL series as her music video I saw you dancing confirms.



From singers to actresses : german actress, b - promi and porn star Annina Ucatis rounds up our trio of voluptuous babes who could have been in a Russ Meyer movie if not for the curse of being born too late.



Another hot sexbomb who celebrates her birthday Today is Tatyana Ali who turns 37. She is best known for playing Ashley Banks on the hit tv show THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR which launched her singing career.


Did she have a booming hardbody like a teenage Janet Jackson or what ?


Man, with that terrific body and a voice to match Tatyana Ali´s the total package - and I´m not talking about Lex Luger. You work that body girl !

She really bOObed all out in later movie appearances like The Clown at Midnight or Fall Into Darkness which I have bought but still haven´t seen.


There are a fewshort clipswith her from various talk show on YouTube but I picked her performance of Wait For It from the Arsenio Hall Show.



Speaking about nubian sexbombs and the Arsenio Hall Show, you might remember Kenya Moore who I mentioned in this post. She also has an anniversary Today - it is her 45th - and when I made the post I didn´t have a good clip from her appearance on the show but now I found one.



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


Nothing is obscene providing it is done in bad taste.

There have been no celebrity birthdays since my last post that I felt the need to comment about so I used the time to get rid of a lot of stuff that had accumulated on my laptop. You know how these things just pile up.


So I spent these last days doing that but also preparing the stuff for new posts and follow up on some stuff from previous posts. But to not leave my readers hanging without any new posts for the weekend I thought I could do one of these link posts I used to do. As usual I will go through the links in the order they appear on my toolbar which will not be the order in which they wind up in the post. So the first thing you will read as it first appears on the post may end up on the bottom and vice versa. But now without further ado let´s get to the things that have kept me busy.

TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICTED COMIC BLOGGER

Now I have already mentioned a few times that with the amount of time it takes me to do these posts I often only get to read many of the links I include in the posts after the fact except for those I have to read to make the actual post. Some of the links I included in my post about Russ Meyer actress Haji are from Sam Tweedle´s CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT and I just had the chance to peruse the archive at more detail.


Besides more orbituaries for such pop culture legends like Leonard Nimoy , Patrick Macnee or Yvonne Craig he has a few comic related posts. He has two interviews with Ronn Sutton about his work on the Honey West and Elvira comics, an informative post about Peyo´s THE SMURFS comics ( Did you know that the Smurfs predated the Justice League of America and the entire Marvel Age of comics ? ) and a really funny post about why you should never tell superhero jokes to comic readers. For the fans of top Ten lists ( and we all are ) there are Comic´s 10 Greatest Dads and two lists about the Top Ten Lamest Superheroes Of All Time ( list 1 / list 2 ) which I´m happy to report doesn´t include the Avenger´s Gilgamesh.


Speaking about Top Ten lists, he lists his Top Ten Picks From The New 52 which was followed up one year later ( no pun intended ) with a post on what worked and what didn´t. And since we are on the subject of awful reboots he has a post on the most awful reboots in comic history in two parts ( part 1 / part 2 ) that includes such great ideas like Dracula, The Shadow and the Blackhawks as superheroes, the Metal Men getting human secret identities, Dick Tracy in Space and the Justice League of Detroit.


To close the book on DC´s NEW 52 there is a really interesting post about why DC made the wrong character gay when they decided to turn Alan Scott gay on EARTH 2. Which leads us directly to our next hot topic.

WOW ! BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS MUST REALLY HATE OTHER WRITERS

Out sheer curiosity I decided to find out whatever happened to gay Iceman after all the hullubaloo that was made about that on the internet.

I for one was not so sure that he would survive the SECRET WARS but apparently I was right in my decision to ditch ALL NEW X - MEN because after bullying the Iceman from the past into admitting he´s gay when he clearly is not now Jean Grey got him so brainwashed that he even teamed up with her to lie to the Iceman from the present and tell him that he´s secretly gay. Which shocked Iceman so much he actually believes it.

Yep, sounds ridiculous but that´s exactly what happened in UNCANNY X - MEN 600 ( way to celebrate an anniversary ) and it seems this " important story " will be " continued further "in the new ALL NEW X - MEN book that starts with a new number 1 and will not be written by Brain Michael Bendis who will leave the X - Men franchise altogether. So the question remains if Bendis was going to leave the x - books anyway, was this his version of a mikedrop or was he even giving all the other writers that come after him the finger, even if it´s only metaphorically ? Why was Iceman turned gay ?


While Disney, Bendis and all the other writers at Marvel insist it was only to tell a good story you have to question if the same story could not as easily have been told with a new character that is gay. After all if you are arguing that it would not have had the same impact with a new character you also imply that Bendis does not have the capability to write a new character and make him that compelling and interesting that it doesn´t matter it´s a new character. And if you say that´s not possible you might want to check out the original SPIDER - MAN 2099 series by Peter David.


I also have noticed that with all the reactions from the first " reveal " of Iceman being gay to now I haven´t heard one person mention the story at all. Not one person. There were a lot of comments about the importance of the story, how everybody who doesn´t like it is a homophobic and how we need more diversity in comics. Mind you, not real diversity OF comics meaning comics that appeal to all kind of readers which is more than just superhero comics but rather superhero comics that represent all kind of people and races and religions because that is what we all want to read about. And we can only identify with people who are the same as we because we don´t understand other people and we do not want to.


I mean let´s be honest here for a moment. Is it really necessary that someone has the same sexual orientation as yourself for you to identify with him ? Does he need to have the game racial background ? Must he have the same age, the same job or even the same sex ? There is this lie being repeated again and again ever since Robin was created that the younger readers couldn´t identify with Batman because - well, obviously he was much too old, duh ! Okay, newsflash, but in all the stories I read with Batman and Robin I always was Batman. Why ? Because he´s the boss and what many adults don´t seem to get into their head is that just because there is a sidekick around younger readers don´t automatically just identify with him because he´s young. It´s a fantasy and sorry, but in my fantasy I´m not the sidekick or the gopher, I´m the guy in charge.


Yeah, Batman was older than me but so what ? I was going to be older some day and that was my example to aspire. In all the comics I read with Superman, Spider - Man or Thor that inspired me I never thought " Gee, I wish there was a young guy around I could relate to because the main character is much too old to identify with. " Maybe that´s a generational thing. I grew up reading a lot of francobelgian comics like ASTERIX, LUCKY LUKE and TINTIN and all these comics were a huge success with kids even if the heroes were all grown ups. So is Today´s comic reading generation unable to relate to people outside of their own small group ?


Okay, back to the topic of gay Iceman, some people say that the change was just made to have diversity for diversities sake , some people tried to make an argument that Iceman already was written as a gay character in the comics which doesn´t make any sense because if you HAVE dated women and are now interested in men, I think people used to call that bi - sexual in my day and age. So understandably the bi - sexual people are not happy that the gay have shanghaied their new break out character.


Another factor here is the movies because they are the real cash makers for Disney so they don´t care what happens in the comics as long as they get a good movie out of the deal. And if you still don´t believe that after they just flushed over fifty years of continuity down the toilet I can´t help you. So actor Shawn Ashmore was asked about this and he said he´s ready to play Iceman as gay . Which in plain english means " Yes, I like to eat and I´m not that stupid that I want to ruin my chances of being in any further Disney movies. " I mean, there´s an old german saying that whose bread you eat their song you´ll sing. And if Disney decides that Iceman is gay that´s how you play him if you want to get paid. Also for an actor who has already played that part a few times it can get boring and so he has a new challenge. Especially since they have already established that he had romantic involvements with Rogue and Kitty Pryde. I wish they had put only half as much effort into finding challenging things for Oscar winning actress Halle Berry to do as they put in finding a way to make Iceman gay.


Of course Stan Lee has also been asked what he thinks about Iceman being gay but I think the interviewer Kit Simpson Browne mistakes Stan Lee´s - let´s say carefully diplomatic - answer as actual approval.

He´s not going to say anything negative about Marvel because he doesn´t want to pee off Disney. All he´s saying is that as long as it´s a good story it´s okay with him. And I think that is as good of a closing argument as any because I think if it had been a really good story nobody would have complained. I mean we swallowed Sue Dibny being retroactivly raped and killed and Tim Drake´s father and the original Captain Boomerang biting the big one in one comic because it was such a good story. So if there was so much fuzz about Iceman being gay . . . you draw your own conclusions.


YOU KNOW YOU ARE OLD ( OR HAVE TASTE ) WHEN YOU LIKE THIS

Among the many bookmarks that have amassed over the last year are many from fellow link partner DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND and since putting them all here would bust the size and purpose of this post I´m doing a small selection of everything I have saved for future posts.

I´m a huge Sal Buscema fan and one of his best - if not THE best - series is ROM, SPACEKNIGHT where he collaborated with the great Bill Mantlo.


Sadly Marvel doesn´t have the rights to the series anymore but who knows ? If the MASTER OF KUNG - FU omnibus books are a financial success maybe Disney will get the license back. In the meantime you can haed over to Old Groove´s blog to read A House Is Not A Home from ROM 5 ,  Dog Day Afternoon from ROM issue 6, As I lay Dying from ROM issue 7,  Deathwing from ROM 8 and The Stalker In The Night from ROM 9.

It´s a series I can´t recommend high enough that should be easily found in dollar bins especially since there are no plans to bring it to the movies.


Of course Sal Buscema did more than just ROM and you can also find Kill ! Cried The Raven ! from SUB - MARINER 26, When Wakes The Kraken from SUB - MARINER 27 and this collection of splash pages from the series on the blog as well as  and another collection of splash pages from his run on INCREDIBLE HULK with inker Joe Staton ( we will return to him later on ).

Also worth reading is a four part saga by Chris Claremont, Sal Buscema and Steve Leiola that started in MARVEL TEAM UP 82 with No Way To Treat A Lady guest starring the Black Widow and Nick Fury, continued in MARVEL TEAM UP 83 Slaughter on 10th Avenue and went on in MARVEL TEAM UP 84 Catch A Falling Hero where we added Shang Chi to the mix which finally concluded in MARVEL TEAM UP 85 with The Woman Who Never Was . I couldn´t find any reprint information but I remember reading at least part of it somewhere in a spanish or german translation.


To end the Marvel section of this part and as a call back to my post on John Romita´s birthday there´s also a post that features the complete six page SATANA story from VAMPIRE TALES 2 along with some other stuff.

I said we were going to come back to Joe Staton and he is one of the artists on THE METAL MEN from the good old times before they got human secret identities. The artist on issues 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 and 49 is Walter Simonson though and Joe Staton does the issues 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 and 56 of the series with Jim Aparo providing the covers for the last 4 issues ( Walter Simonson did the previous covers of these issues ).


Joe Staton was also the artist on A Choice of Destinies from BATMAN FAMILY 18, Gotham Town Is Burning Down ! from BATMAN FAMILY 19 and Trial By Fire from BATMAN FAMILY 20 which introduced the Huntress.

And speaking about Earth 2 bombshells her bff Power Girl was front and center in All Star Super Squad and Brainwave Blows Up ! written by Gerry Conway and art by Ric Estrada ( not to be confused with Erik " Ponch " Estrada from CHiPs ) and Wally Wood from ALL STAR COMICS 58 and 59. In most articles about how artist Wally Wood made Power Girl´s breasts bigger in each subsequent issue you will see art from these stories.


Coming from a parallel earth to the far future one of my favorite series has always been the Legion of Super - Heroes and you can read The One Shot Hero from SUPERBOY 195 which introduced Wildfire, Timber Wolf . . . . Dead Hero, Live Executioner ! from SUPERBOY 197 by Cary Bates and Dave Cockrum and The Legionnaires Who Haunted Superboy ! from SUPERBOY 206 by Cary Bates and Mike Grell on Old Groove´s blog.

Apart from the Legion Mike Grell did a long and beloved stint on the Green Lantern book ( check out The Revenge Of The Renegade from GREEN LANTERN / GREEN ARROW 91 ) but his big opus as a writer / artist was WARLORD. I have been a bit lax with continuing to put the links on my blog so here is Arena Of Death from WARLORD 2, War Gods Of Skartaris from WARLORD 3,Duel Of The Titans from WARLORD 4, The Secret Of Skartaris from WARLORD 5, Home Is A Four - Letter Word from WARLORD 6, The Iron Devil from WARLORD 7, The City In The Sky from WARLORD 8, Lair Of The Snowbeast from WARLORD 9, Tower Of Fear from WARLORD 10 ( WARLORD 11 was a reprint of Travis Morgan´s first appearance in 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL 8 ), Trilogy from WARLORD 12 and The Hunter from WARLORD 13. This is a must read for all true comic fans.


COSPLAY LINKS : THE YAYA AND THE NIGRI ( NO UGLY ONES HERE )

One thing I have the feeling I´m always preparing is my upcoming big Yaya Han post which keeps getting delayed because I always get too worked up. Still I try to find the best stuff about her in the meantime which includes animated GIFs some of which I try to make myself.


And this is what I have been trying to make the last two days. Now despite my lack of success I have found some online and since I´m not sure when I can do my Yaya Han post I want to include them so readers can check them out and don´t have to wait until I can make the post.

The DR OCTOCAT tumblr has a few animated GIFs of Yaya Han cosplaying as the Red Queen which are actually borrowed from COSPLAY SLEEP EAT PLAY where you can find another post with GIFs of Yaya Han in her incredible Dark Elf costume , DARKNESS169 has some nice Gifs of Yaya Han ( cosplaying as Carmilla ) and Jessica Nigri ( cosplaying as New 52 Supergirl ) fighting and speaking about Jessica Nigri : H. Q. Roosevelt on THE ROOSEVELTS has 18 Reasons Why Jessica Nigri Is Better In Gif Form , NERD NINJA has 14 more Jessica Nigri GIFs and there´s the obligatory FUCKYEAHJESSICANIGRI tumblr where you can find all the latest Jessica Nigri GIFs, pictures and videos you will ever need. Never miss one.


And that´s all I have time for Today. I wanted to include a few more links but I got carried away by the whole topic of gay Iceman. Which I hopefully could outbalance a bit with the GIFs of Yaya and Jessica. I hope there is something interesting for you and I hope you have a good weekend.

Since I mentioned Batman in this post and I have bookmarked more Batman videos than I can post here´s Shades Of The Bat about the evolution of his animated series. It has been split into two parts.



I also wanted to add an Elvira video but because most of them on YouTube are of a really bad quality it took me quite some time to find this one.



One of the things I also mentioned in this post is that there are other comics besides super heroes ( and thanks to the efforts of Disney I will be checking out more of these soon ) but for all those readers out there who have no idea what I´m talking about here is a video of Amy Dallen´s visit to Portland, the mysterious town where independent comics thrive.



And speaking about diversity I also wanted to post something different with my music video so I chose this clip from Alisia. I have no idea to which lucky accident I owe finding it in the first place and I couldn´t tell you the title of the song or even from which part of the world she hails. All I know is that she´s hot and has great taste in choosing her outfits.



Last but not least here is the video from which I tried to make a GIF for the last two days without having any success. If somebody can do one of Yaya Han´s opening bit as Chun Li for me it would be greatly appreciated.



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

In honor of Tony Jaa´s 40th birthday I wanted to post something and since I already promised to post issues 108 and 109 of Amazing Spider - Man in my John Romita birthday post I thought now is as good a time as any.


Now you were probably expecting something along the lines of Shang Chi but as usual I´m starting very late on this post because I have been trying to go back to a normal daily routine. Or at least what it normal for me.

This week I was either going on for days without sleep or trying to sleep throughout the day so I can get up early the next day. Which didn´t work out as hoped because I either got very tired a few hours after getting up or I was so awake that I pulled another all nighter with the usual stuff.

Which - as blogger Terry Hooper already suspected - involved cosplay queen Yaya Han among other things I can´t probably mention on this blog. I swear, sometimes I think he has bugged this place out and there must be cameras here somewhere. If you´re wondering, I´m smiling at the moment while typing, just in case. You never know who´s watching.

Okay, before we start there are two more things I have to mention. First up, I´m almost finished with the Epic Collection IRON MAN - STARK WARS ( mostly called ARMOR WARS ) so you know another Bob Layton Iron Man post is coming. But as a small teaser here´s a little out of context panel from the " It wasn´t funny when they wrote it but it´s now " department.


The other thing is that as usual I didn´t want to just post the stories so I went looking for some original pages and don´t pin me on where I found them because I don´t remember. What I know is that I found a lot on - naturally - ROMITAMAN and some on HERITAGE AUCTIONS . Now the thing is that while I didn´t find many original pages for AMAZING SPIDER - MAN issue 108 I did find quite a lot from issue 109. And one thing I noticed is that the pages from the story I found are different from the original art.

The version from the original art is what you will find in the MARVEL VISIONARIES : JOHN ROMITA book I pimped but somehow the version I found online is different. I tried to find the pages that correspondent with the Visionaries version but the only ones I could find are from a foreign edition. Nevertheless I included all of this. So without any further ado let´s start with our fighting mad one two sucker punch tag team story. 


Hyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaah

Since Today is Dona Speir´s 52nd birthday I thought it would be a good idea to re - post part of my post on UNSUNG 80s DIRECT TO VIDEO ICON ANDY SIDARIS because I didn´t get to write much about Dona Speir in the post or in the JLA MOVIE CASTING : ANDY SIDARIS SPECIAL follow up.


Gorgeously buxom, shapely, and statuesque blonde knockout Dona Linda Speir ( 37DD - 24 - 35 ) was born on February the 7th, 1964 in Norwalk, California. Spier was a gymnast and runner while growing up in Newport Beach, California. Speir was the Playmate of the Month in March, 1984.


Not surprisingly, she went to to appear in several Playboy related videos and did follow - up pictorials in a few additional issues of the popular men's magazine. Dona studied film acting with R. J. Adams at The Actors Workshop, Orange County and made guest appearances on episodes of the TV shows AUTOMAN, MIKE HAMMER, MATT HOUSTON, KNIGHT RIDER and MARRIED WITH CHILDREN. She's however best known for portraying tough, gun - toting federal drug enforcement agent Donna Hamilton, in seven low - budget action exploitation features for director Andy Sidaris.


Dona was one of the mainstays from the series alongside Roberta Vasquez who became her bosom buddy ( with an emphasis on the bosom part ).

 
Dona had been part of the series as federal agent Donna Hamilton since HARD TICKET TO HAWAII, Roberta Vasquez played Panthera in PICASSO TRIGGER and started as Dona´s colleague Nicole in GUNS. Now GUNS brought the Lethal Ladies movie series to a new level because with the unbeatable combo of the busty blonde Dona and the exotic and even bustier raven haired Roberta the male viewers were glued to the tv sets.


Roberta Vasquez was born in Los Angeles, on February 13, 1963. She became Playmate of the Month for November, 1984, her measurements then were 40DD - 25 - 36. She stood at 5'8", weighing 125lb, with some of the most perfect natural breasts to ever appear in PLAYBOY magazine.


A former California Highway Patrolwoman, she ended up playing one in Clint Eastwood's 1990 film, THE ROOKIE. She has also featured in several Playmate compilation videos and publications, including WET AND WILD WOMEN ( July 1987 ) and 21 PLAYMATES ( April 1997 ).


Roberta acted in several movies made by Andy Sidaris, in the late '80s and early '90s where she became the new co star opposite Dona Speir.


Add to that redheads like Cynthia Brimhall, brunettes like Ava Cadell or asians like Carolyn Liu - with dozens of other blond and black haired playmates throw into the mix - and you had all the bases covered.


With her athletic frame and martial arts experience the gorgeous Vasquez is a natural action heroine and with her background in the force she is much more convincing as a federal agent than Dona´s previous on screen partner Hope Marie Carlton. All and all, if anyone had to replace Carlton, Vasquez was certainly a great choice, and her chemistry with both Speir and Bruce Penhall would only grow stronger with each subsequent picture.



Andy is probably THE BEST director of action movies for adults. And his cast reads like a WHOS´S WHO of playmates : Roberta Vasquez, Ava Cadell, Cynthia Brimhall, Dona Speir, Pandora Peaks, Julie Strain, Suzi Simpson, Samantha Phillips and Julie K. Smith to mention just a few.


His business plan was as effective as it was simple : make action movies with playmates who get naked very frequently. What´s the best part of the Bond movies ? The Bond girls. What´s the worst part of the Bond movies ? That we don´t get to see more of the Bond girls. So why not make a movie where the Bond girls - or government agents that are as hot as the Bond girls - are the main characters ? I know it sounds simple but the question is : why has no one done it before - or since ? Thanks to the only legitimate heir to boob king Russ Meyer we could see dozens of hot playmates and small screen babes get naked and get their freak on.


But if you now think that the girls in Andy´s movies were just stupid bimbos there to take their clothes off you couldn´t be more wrong. Okay, in MALIBU EXPRESS where we have a male lead the damsel in distress rule applies but starting with HARD TICKET TO HAWAII the girls took over. And for them to be believable main characters they had to be capable agents and what´s more independent women. Yes, the women in these movies were clearly ahead of their time because they could get along without the help of a man. Which doesn´t mean they were prudes, quite the contrary.


But they didn´t wait around until some Prince Charming decided to get it on - these women took charge at the workplace and in the bedroom.



Another cool thing are the locations in the movies. The first couple stick to Hawaii, then they start to expand out - but usually to the same places - Las Vegas, Texas, Lousiana, and Lake Havasu, Arizona in addition to the regular shoots. There are also stops in Washington DC and Paris. Unlike most movies like this, which make do with stock establishing shots, then faking the locations - Andy and his wife Arlene really made their movies in the locations. The only time they diverted from this was Washington - which was faked. But the funny thing is, the stock shots are real footage shot for the movie ! It seems one of their regular crew members was headed to DC to visit family, so clever Andy sent the camera rig with him, and the guy got Malibu Bay a couple of nice, new, crisp establishing shots that completely match the rest of the movie they're put into !

The website CRAVE ONLINE has The Series Project : L.E.T.H.A.L. Ladies which takes a look at all the Andy Sidaris movies inthreeparts and it promises : Professor Witney Seibold introduces you to the greatest action series you've never heard of, with babes, bazookas and blow - up dolls.


I´ve taken the liberty of borrowing this part form the intro :Andy Sidaris, who wrote and directed all but the 8th and 9th films in the series, was a veteran of television, and was perhaps best known for his work on The Wide World of Sports and Monday Night Football. He has been credited in several places for having pioneered what he called the “ Honey Shot ”, which was a gametime reaction shot of the buxom cheerleaders. 


Sidaris, with his wife Arlene, decided in the early 1980s to move into dramatic features, and his entire career was dedicated to a single series of films. This series features all the best and cheapest special effects. Sidaris hired Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets as the lead actresses, and notoriously had them strip, rather frequently, for no good reason. He went to exotic locales, hired expensive vehicles, and got bodybuilders and martial artists to pilot them. Squibs and explosions followed. And many, many softcore sex scenes with some of the best bodies ever seen. 


And while his scripts were always pretty shoddy ( for b film cheapies these movies have surprisingly complicated stories ), and the acting was commonly pretty bad ( bodybuilders and Playboy Playmates aren't known for their thespian virtuosity ), there was a straightforward purity to Sidaris' b movie sensibility. He seemed to have a very sensible and simple filmmaking philosophy: The cheapest special effects are, after all, bare breasts. Throw some bare breasts into a passable action plot of spies and double - crosses, shoot on the beaches of Hawaii, and blow up a few vehicles, and, hey, you've got a pattern that will have audience appeal for time immemorial. He even included an original song in each film, kind of running a parallel to James Bond. His formula lasted through 12 films over 13 years, and he probably would have made more in the series, had he not tragically passed from cancer in 2007.

But the Andy Sidaris movies did not only have playmates, penthouse pets and actors from b movies and tv soaps. For every Erik Estrada there was a Danny Trejo or Pat Morita who starred in DO OR DIE. You know that the reason why he accepted the role were the many happy ending massages by sexbomb Lady Silk that Andy Sidaris wisely wrote into the script.  


You know that Andy Sidaris made things up on the go and changed things whenever the script needed it because the role of Kane played by Pat Morita was later played by a caucasian actor. I´m not entirely sure what the reason for this was, if there was any explanation given like Pat Morita had not been the real Kane but the new Kane is descended from Nazis and his german name was Rohr, which could be loosely translated as Kane.    


These inconsistencies are the topic of Playboy Playmates, Penthouse Pets, and Parallel Realities: The Comic Book World of Cult Filmmaker Andy Sidaris which analyses the different parallel worlds of the Andy Sidaris movies that have similarities with the retconned DC universe after CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. It has many interesting insights about the movies :

There is no doubt that the films of Andy Sidaris appeal to a specific audience, one that very probably included Sidaris himself. The world he created was one full of spies that were, for all intents and purposes, the cheerleaders and football players everyone knew in high school who had gone on to live the exact same kind of life on the stage of international intrigue. Like comic books, everyone who appeared in a Sidaris film was idealized or larger than life, and like vintage adventure comics, the line between good and evil is always very clear. Even with their reputation as low-budget exploitation, Sidaris’s films feature hardly any profanity at all and each one of them prominently features strong female characters who can more than take care of themselves. The tone of the films never becomes too dark, despite the bright splashes of blood that punctuate every gunfight.



In many ways, the films of Andy Sidaris are very similar to comic books, but not the contemporary books that were being released at the time of his most popular films, when many superhero books were trying to tackle “ real world ” problems and recasting their characters in darker, more violent stories in a desperate attempt at remaining relevant. The simple good vs. evil storylines, the beautiful people, the ass-kicking women and sophisticated villains, and yes, even the complete disregard for any kind of standard continuity seem more an echo of Silver Age comics of the 50s. Sidaris refers to the films as “ family films ” in an interview that appears as a film introduction in the Girls, Guns & G-Strings collection, and while he’s obviously joking, the straightforward nature of his stories and the lack of any significant moral ambiguity ( along with the curious lack of profanity ) make the comment much closer to truth than even he may have realized. While the quality of the films took a noticeable turn for the worse in the later installments, it is inarguable that Sidaris always strove to deliver pure entertainment, and in the process he may have inadvertently given “ comic book ” b - movies a good name. Or, at least, a better one than they had before Hard Ticket to Hawaii. 


I can´t mention DO OR DIE without mentioning the best scene featuring the hot Ava Cadell. In later Andy Sidaris movies she had the part of Ava ( coincidence ? ) who was head DJ and president of local Hawaiian radio station KSXY in HARD HUNTED. 24 hours a day, she broadcasts sleazy, porny F&S music, giving out some sex advice and moaning in orgasmic ecstasy. Her sexy speeches also serve as code to spies in the field. 


Then there’s the office assistant, played by Becky Mullen ( it would take too long to go into detail on her so check out her solo post ), who fetches coffee in a skin tight red leather bikini. And if dressing for work nearly naked wasn’t enough, then hold on, because later in the film they actually do work naked, well, almost naked. Ava proceeds to do her radio show from a hot tub topless alongside her by then topless office assistant. It seems that Ava works from wherever she wants wearing whatever she wants. Seriously, if this was a real radio station it had to be on tv !


By the way - talk about playing what you know - DOCTOR Ava Cadell ( you can call her The Sex Doctor ) is America’s number 1 sexpert as a Clinical Sexologist, AASECT Certified Sex Counselor, Hypnotherapist, Founder of LoveologyUniversity.com and President of the American College of Sexologists International. Dr. Ava Cadell’s brand is sexual empowerment as an the author of 8 books and the monthly Sex Advice Columnist for Penthouse Magazine for whom she has created a series of online courses and videos entitled Sex Academy. Dr. Ava is also a sought after media therapist, and global speaker; her mission is to empower people to overcome sexual guilt & shame so they can enjoy the benefits of healthy, sexual relationships. She also has a radio show called SEX DRIVE !

So Ava plays the contract killer in DO OR DIE and she looks spectacular !  


But the best part with her is not when she takes her clothes off ( I had to omit the part with nippleage so it´s SFW ) but when she puts them on. I have never seen a woman putting on leather pants the way Ava does. 


Especially the way she pulls the zipper up is just soooooo provocative ! 


A few years back I bought the Andy Sidaris DVD box via amazon because it was offered at a bargain price and I am glad I did it because it´s not available through amazon anymore or if it´s going for a really extreme price. The only downside is that the box does not include ENEMY GOLD and THE DALLAS CONNECTION since they were done by his son who sadly did not follow in his father´s footsteps as try - outs. The last one is also known under the title DEADWORKS and features another two sexbombs who were in a few of Andy Sidaris´ later movies : Julie Strain and Julie K Smith a.k.a. Julie & Julie the double rack attack. There are two great scenes ( among others ) in DALLAS CONNECTION : in the first one Julie Strain is tying a guy to a chair and stripping to make him ultrahorny. 


Julie Strain debuted in FIT TO KILL, where she played the evil Blue Steele, then she portrayed bad girl Jewel Panther in ENEMY GOLD and bad girl Black Widow in THE DALLAS CONNECTION.  Since she wanted a recurring role in DAY OF THE WARRIOR and RETURN TO SAVAGE BEACH she became federal agent Willow Black. And for those that moan about me bringing up Julie Strain in a comic blog I want to mention that this Penthouse Pet of the Year 1993 not only starred in over 100 movies and was the inspiration for the main character in the animation movie HEAVY METAL 2000, she was also married to Kevin Eastman who created the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES with Peter Laird and was Editor in Chief of HEAVY METAL.


Of course other hot playmates in this movie are leggy Wendy Hamilton and real life Power Girl Julie K. Smith who also does her Andy Sidaris debut here and who also starred in subsequent Lethal Ladies movies.



For a girl with her slender frame she really has an incredibly big bosom ! 


Together with Andy Sidaris veteran Julie Strain new girl Julie K. Smith becomes the new mainstay of the Andy Sidaris movies after the combo of Dona Speir and Roberta Vasquez had their last Hurrah in FIT TO KILL. 


In any case, things were in good hands with new leading lady Julie. 


And that´s all for Today´s post. You can read more about the Andy Sidaris movies through the two posts I have linked to and I have also included some links to watch some of his movies on YouTube. Normally I´m a bit hesitant to include stuff that´s not safe for work - like the trailers I have included in the post - but you can find all of his movies on YouTube.

I tried to find a clip with Dona Speir from the various tv shows on which she appeared but instead I found this one with some nice bikini babes.



I know I wanted to post more german comic videos and one post after the announcement I´m already flip - flopping on that. But you see, Today is also Buster Crabbe´s birthday who played such pulp heroes like Tarzan, Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon who I want to pay homage to with this video.



There is also another sci fi comic related birthday which is one of the reasons why I included Julie Strain in this post : just so I could mention HEAVY METAL. During it´s existence this cult mag has published many series and one of the most famous is THE INCAL by Moebius and Alejandro Jodorowski who turns 86thToday. Since I already posted the video about JODOROWSKY´S DUNE that never got made at H. R. Giger´s birthday here is another video of a movie that never came into being.



Since we are on the subject of Andy Sidaris´ version of James Bond I also have to mention the spanish comic version of him, ANACLETO - AGENTE SECRETO by the great Vazquez who also is the author of such classic series like LAS HERMANAS GILDA and LA FAMILIA CEBOLLETA.


Well Yesterday I was watching the 30th Annual Goya Awards and one of the nominated movies was ANACLETO - AGENTO SECRETO. I don´t think the comic is known outside of Spain so I will probably have to wait until I can get ahold of the spanish DVD to watch it. Nevertheless here is the trailer which looks pretty promising since it seems they stayed true to the premise of the tough secret agent who has to outbalance a low budget with ingenuity, durability, brutality and incredible feats of strength.



I want to end this post with another video with cosplayer Yaya Han who would be equally qualified to star as a sexy astronaut ( or alien ) in a sci fi movie or doing a striptease as a lethal lady in an Andy Sidaris movie.


Since none of the other videos have music I chose this one which I think is the last one with Yaya in her Chun Li costume I haven´t already posted.



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 ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.

You do NOT have to hit me in the head with things so when I found out that Today is not only the birthday of Lon Chaney Jr. from THE WOLFMAN but also of Hazel Court who starred in THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, THE RAVEN, THE PREMATURE BURIAL and THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN I knew it was time to start my postponed series on the Hammer movies.


Originally I just wanted to do a quick post with the third issue of George Perez´ LOGAN`S RUN since I have slept almost the whole day after pulling an all - nighter just so I could deliver the necessary documents for the Job Agency in time but as usual the universe had other plans for this post. I really thought my first post in this series would be about DOCTOR WHO VERSUS DRACULA but I guess we will have to save that for another time.

The upside of this is that I have already prepared most of the stuff I´m going to need for the post as a series of posts about the Hammer movies I have watched since around Christmas last year has long been in the pipeline. Unlike the stuff for the post about Bruce Timm, who celebrated his 55th birthday two days ago. I started to prepare for writing the post but as usual his artwork was scattered over various folders and halfway through looking for them I realized that I would not finish with that in time to do a post on his birthday. Maybe I can do a post in the next days but until then here is an homage he did on the famous Hammer movies. 


Now I have seen all of the movies I mentioned above but because it has been to long since I have seen the first three movies and only the last one is still fresh in my memory ( and because all the material I prepared is from that movie ) I will concentrate on THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN or like I like to call the movie BARON FRANKENSTEIN DOESN`T SOCIALIZE.

Because that´s one of things why Victor Frankenstein ( played by Peter Cushing in this movie ) has so many problems : he´s only concerned about his work with no interest in anything else - including his cousin Elizabeth portrayed by Hazel Court who understandably rose to fame with this movie thanks to one of the most incredible cleavages in movie history. 


Which took me completely by surprise because I had no idea about Hazel Court´s status as a scream queen and that a lot of her roles hinged on her big pair of lung´s ability to scream in horror loudly and fill out a cleavage.


Unlike in most of her movies ( where she took the other major female roles besides the sweet vulnerable heroine, typically regal - looking women with a sensational body who are dominated by the powerful, sadistic men they love ) here she plays a really likeable and innocent character. So you don´t expect her to go into full cleavage mode.

And because when she first appears in the movie she doesn´t look like this ultimate sex vixen. In fact she is covered from head to toe and while she sure looks like a classy lady you can only guess what lies underneath.


Now you might think why it should matter if Baron von Frankenstein is ignoring his cousin but the thing is he plans on marrying Elizabeth. And before you cry out I want to mention that this is not as socially frowned upon in the time period the movie takes place as it would be Today.

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN - which first paired Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee - came out in 1957 and the events of the movie are supposed to take place hundred years earlier in 1857. A time when pre - arranged marriages were the rule. As were marriages between relatives in noble families because of their widespread offspring. In many cases it were very distant relatives like the fourth or fifth cousin twice removed.

They did that to stay in their own elite circle without having to deal with disgusting peasants and to ensure their real estate and properties were preserved for future generations. In any case a name like Baron Victor von Frankenstein clearly indicates nobility and the marriage between them is something that is expected since he financially supported her part of the family for decades. And if you think that sounds like buying a wife, well, that was the rule back then. Their role in society has changed a lot since then but around 1857 girls were raised mainly to be married off rich, a fact that is hinted at in the first scene with the young Elizabeth.

Which is at the beginning of the flashback that starts with the burial of Victor´s mother leaving him the sole heir - and the one responsible for financial supporting his aunt and her daughter Elizabeth. After the service Victor hires Paul Krempe ( played by Robert Urquhart ) as his private teacher, who later on becomes his partner in his scientific endeavors. 


They start innocently enough with the restoration of life but soon this philanthropic goal is cast aside and Frankenstein starts to delve into creating his own life form. And Paul Krempe starts questioning if they should cross these moral boundaries because when you start stealing body parts from hanged criminals you know it is only going to end badly.

His concerns are mounting and he is ready to leave Victor to his own devices when Elizabeth enters the picture. Paul is quite smitten with her and after he tries to convince her to leave the house in vain ( since he won´t disclose just which kind of experiments Victor really is conducting ) he decides to stay so he can make sure nothing happens to her. Victor on the other hand is too busy with the experiments neglecting Elizabeth and getting it on with the hired help which is another thing that goes through all Frankenstein movies I have seen. And which quite frankly threw me for a loop in this one since I don´t understand why he is giving it to the maid when he has a hot fox like Hazel Court available who is willing and able. In other movies the motivation is that he doesn´t want to be burdened with marriage when he can get the milk for free but he is all set to marry Elizabeth anyway and it doesn´t look like she plans on shirking her marital obligations either. In fact she often tries to lure him into her bedroom to which he reacts in a way I can´t really understand. 


Like somebody said about Reed Richards : for such a brilliant man he can be quite stupid sometimes. Which would be okay if you knew he really had no idea how hot she was but you really ask yourself if he doesn´t fully realize her sex appeal since he uses her as bait in her bust out scene.

At this point I was still watching the movie but I had already given up hope on seeing any Länderpunkte even though the Hammer movies are quite famous for the sultry and revealing vixens that star in it. I knew that the maid was not going to provide anything in that department. 


So Victor Frankenstein is assembling his body parts and Paul is asking him where he is going to find a brain that is brilliant enough for his creation.

Next thing you know Victor has invited the greatest scientific mind of his time period Professor Bernstein for dinner where Elizabeth appears in a dress with an incredible cleavage that is sure to blow your socks off !


And this shot doesn´t do it justice. You have to see it from different angles to really appreciate how little of Hazel Court´s stunning anatomy this dress leaves to the imagination especially when leaning forward.


She´s partially topless for Heaven´s sake and you know right from the start that Professor Bernstein is the real genius here because he tells Frankenstein right away that he has to spend less time in the laboratory and pay more attention to a hot tomato like his future wife Elizabeth.


Ah, if only Victor would be more open to Elizabeth´s charms. As it is Paul arrives unexpectedly and he´s very surprised that Victor has a guest who is no less such a scientific expert. He has no idea that his old pal Victor is going for the age old one two punch of distracting a guy with them boobs while arranging a little accident to cut open his head and put his brain into a patchwork body. Well, maybe the part with stealing the brain and using it for some scientific aberrations is not as common as the boobs distraction part but never underestimate the power of a good, firm pair.  


After Professor Bernstein ( who has an unmistakable german accent in the english language version ) has met his timely demise Frankenstein pays for the burial as the upstanding citizen he is - and because he so gains access to the Professor´s brain. He is surprised by Peter Krempe who tries to stop him and in the ensuing struggle the brain is damaged.

But Frankenstein´s motto is waste not, want not so he uses the brain anyway. As one can expect this doesn´t lead to the expected results and when his foul creation first regains consciousness it tries to kill him. Thankfully Peter is at hand to help him overpower it and Frankenstein promises to destroy the monster but only after he has performed an autopsy to substantiate his theories. Of course he will do this the next day and before that can happen the monster escapes and kills a blind man. Victor and Paul hunt the monster down and Paul shoots it in the head. They bury the monster and Paul is glad that the nightmare is over but you already know that Frankenstein is going to dig it up again.

At this point the maid who Victor is giving it to instead of his hot fiancee decides it´s a good time to blackmail him into marrying her and threatens to expose what he has been doing in his lab but she only achieves to end up as monster food. I guess this was her sole purpose from the beginning.

With that obstacle out of the way a big wedding is taking place at the mansion but Elizabeth´s hopes of a romantic wedding night are crushed.


You think he could make an exception on this day especially after Elizabeth went to all the trouble of making herself presentable with another stunning dress that displays her breast ... I mean best features.


Thankfully Peter - who is a subscriber to the old saying better late than never - arrives in the nick of time and is much more appreciative of her feminine charms. While he is burning with desire for her luscious body Elizabeth prods him to join Victor in the laboratory since he mentioned a few days ago that there would be something he wanted to show Peter. 


Which is of course the monster which Victor has " fixed " and which now - at least - obeys his every command. Peter and Victor start an argument about whose fault it is that what was planned as the perfect specimen turned into such a massive failure during which they leave the house and the monster ends up all alone in the laboratory. Which in turn is the moment when Elizabeth decides it´s time to find out once and for all what´s going on in her husband´s lab that so much more alluring than her.


Naturally the monster has escaped again by the time Elizabeth finally makes it to the lab so she finds nothing but Frankenstein´s weird scientific equipment which makes me wonder if they really gave the monster the brain of Professor Bernstein or the brain of Harry Houdini with the times he has already escaped in the movie up to this point. 


Now most of the pictures you find online of Hazel from the movie are from this scene because it contains everything that is essential to what we now call " gothic horror " : the beautiful heroine ( preferably with an ample bosom and wearing a beautiful dress with a generous cleavage ) wandering through a haunted mansion or castle with a gas light in hand trying to unravel the big mystery with danger lurking behind every corner.


It´s the quintessential motif and you can find it in most horror movies, horror comics, horror novels down to the cheapest pulp dime novels.


And Hazel Court ( who originally was the first choice for Diana Rigg´s part in THE AVENGERS ) looks just absolutely fantastic in this scene.


For those still keeping tabs on the story Elizabeth has a run in with the monster who attacks her and while Paul decides it´s high time to get out of Dodge Victor manages to destroy his creation by burning it - after trying to shoot it and accidentally wounding Elizabeth in the process.

With this we end the flashback and wind up where the movie began : in Victor Frankenstein´s prison cell where he awaits his execution for the murder of Justine, the maid which was killed by the monster. Which looks nothing like the Frankenstein monster we know from movies or comics.

 
Paul drops by for a last visit but instead of verifying Victor´s story and therefore confess his complicity in illegal experiments he decides to let Elizabeth enjoy the till death do us part section of her marriage vows, probably the only part of her marriage with Victor she´s going to enjoy.

So there´s definitely a moral here as the guy who was more interested in the girl than playing with dead body parts gets the girl in the end while the guy who was too busy to get busy hangs from the end of a noose.

This ends my review of THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, which was Hazel Court´s first Hammer production and one of her best movies. At least as far as I can say without having seen all the others she made. But based on what I could find on the internet it really is and if you haven´t seen it you really should check it out. I thought about getting it from amazon but all the Hammer movies are only available in a censored version in Germany.


Usually I like to include the biography in my cult siren posts but since I would just be paraphrasing anyway I´m going to leave that for the link section where you can find more infos about Hazel Court. This post is long enough as it is anyway. So let´s start with Jim Lowe at VOT DER DUMBOOZLE ?, The Popular Excavation Site who not only has a biography on Hazel Court but everything else you might need like pictures and an exhaustive filmography. Naturally Hazel Court has her own entry on the CULT SIRENS website and there is a very detailed orbituary at THE INDEPENDENT . THE PETER CUSHING BLOG has That Feminine Touch : Women in Gothic which is all about Hazel Court and Valerie Gaunt ( she plays the maid in The Curse of Frankenstein ) and Terry Blass at TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK even has an interview with Hazel conducted in April 1996.


Michael Arruda at his self - named blog has an entry on Hazel Court that speaks in detail about her role in The Curse of Frankenstein and offers a quick rundown of her horror movie appearances with short commentaries which really was most helpful and you can read a longer review of that movie on MAGAZINES AND MONSTERS ! where you can also find posts on CAPTAIN AMERICA , DOCTOR STRANGE , THE PHANTOM STRANGER , THE DEMON and other Bronze Age comics. There´s also another review on CINEMATIC CHATHARSIS and Tim Lucas at VIDEO WATCHBLOG has a post on Jimmy Sangster, the Stan Lee of Silver Age horror who wrote scripts for The Curse of Frankenstein and other classic Hammer horror movies.

The movie is also featured as one of the best Hammer movies in CINEMANERDZ History of Hammer Films and Sarah Lorraine at FROCK FLICKS takes a look at the costumes in The Masque of The Red Death about which a critic once wrote " the sexy, busty redhead Juliana is played by the English actress, Hazel Court, in whose cleavage you could sink the entire works of Edgar Allan Poe and a bottle of his favorite booze at the same time " so be sure to check it out in the video section of this post.


Last but not least I have to mention the COMBATSIM FORUM which is where I found the picture at the top of this post, they also has a brief bio of Miss Court. Thanks to all of the above for providing information.

We start the videos with another cult classic from Hazel Court´s oeuvre DEVIL GIRL FROM MARS. I never know, is it science fiction or still horror ?



Who is definitely horror is Stephen King, an open admirer of Hazel Court who mentioned her in books like Danse Macabre - among others - and I wanted to post this for quite some time before it vanishes from YouTube.



Today is also the 86th birthday of Robert Wagner who is best known to Today´s audiences as the wheelin´, dealin´, styling and profiling Dad of Anthony DiNozzo on the hit show NCIS while my generation knew him from HART TO HART where he starred alongside sexbomb Stefanie Powers.


It´s where most people my age first heard the phrase : " Hello Sailor. " but Robert Wagner also starred in one of my favorite comic adaptions PRINCE VALIANT. There have been many movie and cartoon adaptions since but for me this is the one that stayed most faithful to Hal Foster´s creation up to the " singing sword " in the swashbuckling scene below.



If you haven´t seen the Prince Valiant movie you can do so on YouTube .

And speaking about watching movies on YouTube here´s The Masque of The Red Death with Hazel Court´s finest performance as promised.



While looking for material on Hazel Court I found the serial Hampton Wick from the british tv show The Two Ronnies. I don´t know who the actress in this is but she has the right prospects to star in a Hammer production.



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Since Today is Valentine´s Day I wanted to do a post about one of the greatest romances in comics. But if you know this blog there´s got to be a twist to it. So my post is not about how this romance started or how it stood the test of time but much rather how it totally crashed and burned.


And I mean the burn part quite literally since one of the involved persons here - and pretty much the injured party - is the Fantastic Four´s most flammable member, Johnny Storm a.k.a. the Human Torch.

To set the story up, Johnny met Crystal from the Inhumans in issue 45 of The World´s Greatest Comic Magazine and in issue 48 the hidden city of Attilan was already placed under an impenetrable dome by mad Maximus.


Johnny spent the next few months trying to find a way to get through the barrier when he was not busy fighting bad guys like Galaktus, Klaw, or Doctor Doom with the Silver Surfer´s stolen power cosmic until the barrier was shattered by Black Bolt in issue 59. Now you would think that Johnny Storm and Crystal would re - unite as soon as possible but Black Bolt in his wisdom decided that the members of the royal family of Inhumans had to go out into the world to explore and they had to take Crystal with them. Why they couldn´t just go to New York to do that - and drop Crystal at the Baxter Building on the way - is just beyond me. It takes two more issues until Crystal and Johnny catch up again. Crystal than lived in the Baxter Building with Johnny and took the place of his pregnant sister on the roster, officially becoming a member of the Fantastic Four with issue 81.  


Crystal stayed with the team ( and Johnny, with whom she had quite a few arguments ) until issue 105. Earth´s pollution had a cumulative effect on Crystal´s health and the only way to save her was to return to Attilan. 


The next few issues the Fantastic Four are busy with Janus, the Nega - Man and the events of The Overmind Saga ( I have written numerous times about one of THE best Fantastic Four stories ever so I won´t bother you with it here, just check out this post if you want to read more ) so it isn´t until issue 117 that we find out that Crystal has been intercepted on her way to Attilan by one of the Fantastic Four´s old sparring partners.


That Diablo character really has some influential fans at Marvel, he was the first the Fantastic Four go up against in John Byrne´s legendary run on the book, he is the first one Ben Grimm´s team goes up against in the ALL IN THE FAMILY storyline ( which will be the topic of an upcoming post - promise ) and he´s also the first antagonist for Marvel´s first family during Carlos Pacheco´s undeservedly underrated Fantastic Four run.


Anyway, Diablo brainwashes Crystal into believing she is the mayan goddess Ixchel to help him gain control of the city of Terra Verde so he can exploit the city for all the rare chemicals he needs for his potions.


With the help of the Fantastic Four ( and a particularly well thrown stone ) Diablo is defeated and Crystal´s memory restored but in the meantime Johnny has learned that the mad Maximus has taken control of the great refugee and she must leave Johnny - again - to help out the royal family.

Boy, that Maximus surely put a cramp in Johnny´s love life intentionally or not. So Crystal is once again out of reach for Johnny while the team has an encounter with the Black Leopard ( who went back to calling himself the Black Panther again right after this adventure ) and battles menaces like Galaktus ( again ! ), an alien who kidnaps Sue and the Mole Man ( how is it that most stories with the Mole Man include Ben Grimm going over to the dark side ? ) until Johnny decides in issue 129 that enough is enough and he´s going to live with Crystal in the city Attilan from now on.


Despite the best efforts of the rest of the team to stop him Johnny manages to take the Pogoplane and make his way to Attilan but upon arriving there he gets the feeling he stole the royal porcelain because he´s treated like persona non grata. He is attacked when he enters the city, nobody wants to tell him what´s going on and to top it all off they don´t want to let him get near Crystal. Which should have been the first hint that something is fishy ( and I´m not talking about Triton here ). I mean if they thought that Crystal had made an understandable decision they would have let Johnny just talk with her. The fact that they feel the need for an intervention before Johnny is allowed to see Crystal is a clear indication that they think Crystal´s decision gives reason to be upset. 


And for those at home keeping tabs, the story that Crystal tells Johnny in the flashback scene takes place after the events in AVENGERS issue 104. 


We now start with issues 131 ( which was drawn by artist Ross Andru ) and 132 of FANTASTIC FOUR, but I have to mention for those uninitiated or unfamiliar with the Fantastic Four and the Inhumans ( if Disney has their way future generations will be oblivious to the first one and onky familiar with the second one ) that Crystal does not have healing powers. She never received any special training as a nurse so there is no logical reason why she should be critical to Quicksilver´s reconvalescence or why she would be better suited to heal him than a real healer with real healing powers - which DO exist in Attilan. This whole thing is entirely her fault. 


I´m not sure I really " got " the story when I first read it since I was more interested in the superhero fights but when I read it again many years later it really hit home. On the positive side Johnny got a new dress out of the deal, the Fantastic Four got another member to substitute for Sue Storm and the relationship between Crystal and Quicksilver would become an even bigger train wreck. If you think I´m being too harsh on Crystal here you might want to check out Crystal : a love story on THE FANTASTIC FOUR 1961 - 1989 WAS THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. And last but not least I want to add for consideration that if the roles had been reversed ( Johnny had been away and when Crystal returns to him he is with another girl ) and Johnny had dumped Crystal in such a fashion this story would be in the big catalogue of Women in Refrigerators next to Avengers 200. 

We start the video section with Gilbert O´Sullivan´s ode to the lonely.



Lately I decided to include more videos about german comics or videos about comics in german to my posts for the benefit of possible german readers. I was looking for something related to Valentine´s Day and while it´s not EXACTLY about love this is about relationships. To those that have never heard of him, Loriot a.k.a. Victor Von Bülow was a german humorist who did comedy sketches and cartoons ( drawn and animated ).


( The daily damages of the railway tracks between Schmilau and Hollenbeck are without any doubt attributable to children at play ).

For kids of my generation he was known as the guy who wrote Reinhold, Das Nashorn and who invented Wum and Wendelin, cartoon characters who appeared on Der Große Preis, one of the biggest Satirday night game shows when Germany knew how to make that kind of entertainment.



While I wasn´t particularly fond of his comedy sketches I always liked his cartoons and his specialty was to show what was " typical german ". One of his best series in this vein was Scenes of A Matrimony and his most famous one is The Breakfast Egg. God, men are primitive creatures. 



I guess I don´t have to explain this one. This is actually the only one I had bookmarked with Valentine´s Day in the title. And it´s got Power Girl too.



One of the things I did these last few days was watch all the episodes of Lip Sync Battle I could get a hold on. Yes, there really is a show about this but then I´m late to the party as usual so I probably don´t have to explain this one to my audience. This is from one of the best episodes and maybe this will give you an idea if you forgot to get a present for your other half.



Well, maybe it is a coincidence that the video with the hot lapdance comes right before a Yaya Han video and maybe not but I don´t want to influence any hot asian cosplayers with a killer body one way or the other.

I´m just saying that if you should feel any urges in that direction just go for it, Yaya ! Anyway, I want to include a video where she is not cosplaying as Power Girl or Chun Li as you are probably already tired of those and to tell the truth I don´t think I have any of them left under my bookmarks.


This one is actually so new that I haven´t even seen it myself.



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Yes, it´s once again to put on your flight rings and travel one thousand years into the future for one of the biggest brawls in Legion history. 


I know that you probably expected to see the next issue of George Perez´ LOGAN`S RUN but I always try to keep things balanced so because my last post was Marvel related and my next post will also be Marvel related I wanted to post something from DC. I thought about writing about THE RETURN OF BARRY ALLEN since most of the tv series THE FLASH is based on that particular story but I´m going to keep that for a FLASH FRIDAY post. So with that in mind I still wanted to post something from George Perez so the second issue of LEGION OF THREE WORLDS was elected.

Now I won´t even try to give you a summary of all the weird and crazy things that happened in issue 1 because that´s impossible so just check out the first post in this series . Let´s just say that a lot of s - word went down and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. When I first started this I wasn´t sure how this would go over with my readers since it was not that long ago when it initially was published but all the positive responses have encouraged me to continue. It appears a lot of people missed this series and a lot of people like to remember a time when DC knew how to treat George Perez - before he was relegated to a Power Girl / Huntress series with bad writing and an even worse Power Girl costume or doing inks on titles like GREEN ARROW or SUPERMAN.


Is it any wonder he went to KABOOM! to do his own thing ? And DC can´t even blame anybody else ( like they usually do ) because they are the ones who f - worded this up. But in this post we want to concentrate on the good stuff so let´s start with the second issue of Final Crisis - Legion of Three Worlds. Like in the first post I added all the original art pages I could find but don´t get too used to it. The good news is that managed to find issues 3 to 5 so I can post the entire series. Some people may think this could be a problem but in my experience if a series is good people will buy it even if they have already read it. Heck, I bought all the single issues, then I bought them again when I was exiled to Spain, I bought it again as a hardcover because I already knew I was going to re - read this one ad infinitum and then I bought the german hardcover to give it away as a Christmas present. So anybody who tells me that people who haven´t read this series before will not buy it because they can read the issues on this blog surely doesn´t know what he´s talking about and should not work in comics. I mean, yes, sometimes people read comics online and they don´t buy the single issues or the trade. Which is mostly because what they read sucks, duh. If your comic is crap than people will not buy it especially if they have already read it and know what a big pile of crap it is. It doesn´t - obviously - work with Marvel and DC because there are diehard fans who will read their series no matter into how big a pile of crap it´s been turned into. And there are new comic readers out there who have no idea how good comics used to be and to them this crapfest is the new normal. Those suckers have no idea how much Disney and DC is screwing with them but any one who is too lazy to get educated about comics has made his own bed. But regularly if your comic is good people will buy it even if they have already read it and if your comic is crap people will not buy it when they have read it. Sometimes they won´t even take it for free. Okay, before this whole rant started I wanted to mention that I could not find any original art on issues 3 and 5. Meanwhile :  


Daimn, and that was only issue 2. Next up is more future mayham than you can shake a stick at and as I said, I couldn´t find any original art for that issue so if you know where to find some contact me. Now this post was all about the Legion and one of the earliest artists on the book was Curt Swan who would have celebrated his 96th birthday Tomorrow. Now with a name like Tales from the Kryptonian I should do a post on that but I´m afraid I will be busy all day with a post on cult siren Yvonne Romaine who has her 78th birthday on that day. So much for DR WHO vs DRACULA.


Now if I want to get to that birthday post I should wrap up this post but first there are the usual links to take care of and there are always a lot of links when the Legion of Super - Heroes is concerned. In keeping with the topic of this post inker Todd Klein on TODD`S BLOG has a review of Final Crisis 4 and issues 1 and 2 of Final Crisis - Legion of Three Worlds and there´s also a review of the first two issues with lots of pictures by Neil04 at DARKSEID REVENGE . Brawl2099 at the OBSERVATION DECK ponders the question Why Doesn´t The Legion of Super - Heroes Get More Love ? and Matthew E at Legion Abstract : Legion of Super - Heroes analysis and commentary has a very helpful post on where to start with the Legion of Super - Heroes. And you can find more helpful information in the Legion Publication History post of the LEGION WIKI. But wait, there´s more.

If you want to read more about classic Legion stories STEVE DOES COMICS has posts on Superboy and the Legion of Super - Heroes issues 197 , issue 198 , issue 199 and issue 200 which sadly is the last issue Dave Cockrum did because the boneheads at DC refused to return the original art for the double page of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel´s wedding. Just goes to show you that the suits at DC always knew what´s " best for business ". Everything bad has also his good side as this led to Dave Cockrum doing the New X - Men with Claremont and Mike Grell taking over the Legion.


Speaking about Dave Cockrum he was not only a great penciler and designer - as he showed with his costume designs for the Legion and the New X - Men - he also did help other pencilers shine through his fabulous inks as you can see in this post on DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND. 


And last but not least the LEGION OF SUPER - BLOGGERS has DC´s Who´s Who entries on Sun Boy , Princess Projectra and The White Witch . 

Since I already covered the Legion of Super - Heroes cartoon in various posts Today´s cartoon related video is about GALACTIC GUARDIANS, and how it evolved from SUPER FRIENDS. Art wise the show was based on Jose Luis Garcia Lopez´ guideline bible for all the characters DC published.



I always say that you can find the best stuff on YouTube - especially if you are looking for something else - and I never knew that there had been an ADDAMS FAMILY Halloween movie that reunited the entire original cast.



Today´s comic related german video is from Bunte Welten where he takes a look on some Superman comics in the attic he got from his Dad. This is depressing because I read most of these comics when they came out.



Since posts about the Legion are always about time travel and one of the Legion´s biggest enemies is the Time Trapper here is the short film TIME TRAP written and directed by Michael Shanks, SMALLVILLE´s Hawkman.



To finish up Today´s post is another video from Lip Sync Battle, this time from the UK pendant. At first you might ask yourself why we need a UK version but I guess after seeing Jorgie Porter´s performance of I´m a Slave 4 U you will want more of this. She´s better than the real thing.



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There is no Tomorrow unless the time Trapper sees it.

Today is just chockful of celebrity birthdays like Joseph Gordon - Levitt ( 36 ), Jerry O´Connell ( 42 ), Denise Richards ( 45 ), Lou Diamond Phillips ( 54 ) or Tom Jones ( 75 ) but I just had to take the chance to write about another cult siren from the Hammer movies, incredible Yvonne Romain.


Now I don´t believe in coincidences but what are the chances that two hot cult sirens have their birthdays in the same month and I have not only seen movies with both of them I have also already prepared most of the material for a post on them ? What else could I do but do a post Today ?

Like in my post about Hazel Court a few days ago I will concentrate on one specific movie with Yvonne Romain, The Curse of The Werewolf from 1961 because quite frankly it´s the only one I´ve seen. And like Hazel Court in The Curse of Frankenstein Yvonne totally made the movie for me. Not that the movie is bad - it has Oliver Reed in it for crying out loud - but as soon as Yvonne appears on screen the movie is elevated at least three levels. Up to that point I was watching the movie more for curiosity since it really goes into detail about the origin of the werewolf curse.

It was really late and I was getting really sleepy but since I had already started watching the movie I told myself I would wait with going to sleep until the origin story of the werewolf was told. The movie begins with a beggar who comes to the spanish town of Santa Vera and wonders why the city is deserted since it´s not Sunday. A city guard - or at least an official of some kind - shows him a proclamation but because the beggar can´t read he goes to a nearby tavern where he finds the townspeople. I don´t know if I have mentioned it in my post about Hazel Court but it seems people from small towns are the same in all horror movies. At least in all the Hammer movies I watched. They don´t like strangers and they don´t like to talk about what´s going on and prefer to ignore things hoping that it will make them go away. To think the whole werewolf curse thing could have been avoided if anybody had told the beggar not to go to the castle and ask the Marquis for food from the banquet since he´s a sick S.O.B.

Instead they tell him that the town is deserted because the Marquis is getting married and so Today is a holiday and if he wants some food he should ask the Marquis. So not knowing they meant that in a sarcastic way the beggar goes to the Marquis wedding celebration to ask for drink and food and the Marquis who is an ill tempered ass is about to deny him when his new wife takes pity on the beggar. In jest but mostly to amuse his party guests the Marquis " buys " the beggar for his wife as a pet. The beggar gets wine to drink and food to eat and than has to dance for the guests. While this is terribly funny for the party guests the poor beggar is oblivious to his part. For him the Marquis is just a generous soul who saves him from starvation and while this seems a little dimwitted on the beggars part there probably weren´t that many noblemen who would give anything to a beggar so I guess if you encountered someone like this you wouldn´t ask too many questions as long as you got some Pesetas and something to eat and drink out of the deal. So he also doesn´t mind too much when he is asked to crawl around on all four and bark like a dog.

The guy is practically having the time of his life. The only one who is not as amused is the Marquis´ wife and so the wedding party ends and the guests leave. Concerned with the poor beggar she tells the Marquis that he should be looked after and somehow the Marquis has drunk so much that he mistakes looke for locked and the beggar ends up in the castle´s dungeon. The Marquis quickly forgets about this and after a while the only people who know of the beggar are the dungeon keeper and his mute daughter. As the years go by the dungeon keeper dies and his daughter has to fend for the beggar. Which is where Yvonne Romain comes in.     


At which point I decided to give the movie a few more minutes because things had just begun to get interesting. So the mute daughter of the dungeon keeper has grown up into a sexbomb but she still brings the beggar his food every day who starts to look at her with different eyes.

Or at least that is what I think is being implied here. Anyway, because our friend the Marquis is not the nicest person in the world his wife and all of his friends have left him and so he stays in his room. In which Yvonne has to go one day, doing double duty as a cleaning woman on the side much to the delight of the horny Marquis who is eager to get his hands on Yvonne. 


The Marquis tries to charm Yvonne but since he is rather old and bad smelling since he spent the last weeks if not months in his room this doesn´t work as good as it used to. He then wants to know the servant girl´s name but because she can´t speak she can´t tell him and as the Marquis gets more aggressive she struggles and manages to escape.


You really have to buy this movie because the only way to really savor this scene is watching it in slow motion, preferably on a huge plasma screen.


Yvonne Romain really knows how to fill out a cleavage and at a few times it looks like her huge talents are almost spilling out of her tight top.


Now the Marquis isn´t very amused by being spurned by a hot woman and a servant no less even a hot sexbomb like Yvonne so he has his servants find her and throw her in the dungeon to cool off not knowing that she will be locked in with the beggar who is more animal than man at this point and who feels a different kind of hunger come over him when he sees the little girl that was always kind to him grown into a voluptuous bombshell.


Now I´m not sure if this scene works for me since I always thought that animals don´t bite the hand that feeds them and Yvonne is practically the only one who feeds him. I just don´t think the creature would assault the only person who was good to him. On the other side even a caged animal is still an animal and might turn on you when you least expect it as one part of a world famous duo of magicians had to learn the hard way. Or it could be that this scene is supposed to emphasize that there is nothing left of the beggar and he attacks anyone. Now that I think about it as a former pet holder I can tell you that somtimes animals DO bite the hand that feeds them and if you look at it from a logical standpoint he may not bite her hand although his treatment of Yvonne is not exactly with care.

To make matters worse the mute servant girl can´t even cry for help - not that her jailers would heed her pleas - and is soon overcome by the beast.


We don´t know how much time has passed when we see Yvonne next - the whole movie is not very specific when it comes to the small details - but she awakes after what looks like quite an ordeal although her dress is not as torn off as one might suspect. I am not entirely sure if censorship issues didn´t prevent them from showing this in a more realistic way. 

wolfman

In my post with John Romita Sr´s AMAZING SPIDER - MAN issues 108 and 109 I mentioned the reprint comic MARVEL TALES and posted some of Mike Zeck´s brilliant covers for the series ( and of George Perez ). As a big fan of Mike Zeck´s work I thought why not make a full post out of it ?


The only problem was that I was not the first one who ever had the idea.

There´s a post on GIANT - SIZE MARVEL with 5 of these covers and with a bigger size than you will find here. You can also find a post on MARVEL COMICS OF THE 1980s with all of Mike Zeck´s covers for the series ( again in a bigger size than here ) and a post with the original art for issues 210 and 212 of MARVEL TALES. There are also some great Mike Zeck G. I. JOE covers to be found on that site. Now I definitely wanted to include the black and white art but what else could I do to come up with a unique twist ? What something that hasn´t been done before with this ?


Now I´m always working on posts even when it looks like I don´t. Which is mostly because there is a lot of work involved that has to do with preparation that you don´t see on the blog but that´s also important.

So besides the Mike Zeck covers for MARVEL TALES and the ones from George Perez I also had some covers by Ron Lim that included some issues that were included in the Epic Collection SPIDER - MAN : GHOSTS OF THE PAST ( which I got from amazon´s new and used books section for 14 EUROS ) about which I plan to write a post pretty soon. Now I was pretty sure I knew which MARVEL TALES Ron Lim cover belonged to which original issue of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN and I sorted them accordingly but because I like to double and triple check things before I put them on the blog for all time - a habit that has saved me some embarrassment so far - I went to the GRAND COMIC DATABASE to make sure and lo and behold, while I was spot on with some of the covers there was a great number where I was totally off. So I´m going to throw everything into this post : the Mike Zeck covers, the original art - where I could find it - and the issue of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN they correspond to which might surprise you in some cases. Now MARVEL TALES 209 reprints AMAZING SPIDER - MAN 129 which has been hommaged quite a few times over the years.


Here´s the original art of Mike Zeck´s cover for MARVEL TALES 210.


Okay, here we have Spider - Man and the South American villain Tarantula fighting on a ship so it should not be difficult guessing this one, right ?


Okay, this one IS pretty easy : AMAZING SPIDER - MAN 134. By the way you may have noticed that the covers I posted from AMAZING SPIDER - MAN so far are not the ones from the american edition. As I said I wanted to make this post special so I thought why not include some foreign comic covers ? For my readers from the United States this is an interesting peek to how the covers are translated to foreign editions and for me it´s less work since I can use covers I already have. There will however be some original US covers, mostly where I didn´t have another version handy.


Our next Mike Zeck cover is MARVEL TALES 211. Here´s the original art :


So here we got Spidey and the Punisher coming through a window with shattered glass fying everywhere, guns a - blazing. Does it look familiar ?


Well, if it doesn´t it´s because the cover by John Romita Sr doesn´t look like this at all. Here´s the original art for AMAZING SPIDER - MAN 135.


It´s a totally different design. Instead of Spider - Man and the Punisher side by side here we have Spider - Man prominently in the middle with the Punisher sharing the background with the rest of the supporting cast.


Our last original Mike Zeck art is for the cover of MARVEL TALES 212.


Another great Spider - Man / Punisher cover ( he was used quite a lot during that time ) but for which issue of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN ?


Actually MARVEL TALES 212 didn´t reprint any issue of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN and instead contained the first half of GIANT - SIZE SPIDER - MAN 4.


The second part of this oversized comic book was put in MARVEL TALES 213 so there is no corresponding SPIDER - MAN cover for this one.


Now some of you might say that it´s not that difficult to figure out to which issues of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN the covers of MARVEL TALES correspondent because you just have to go in chronological order. But as you have seen MARVEL TALES jumped from issue 129 right to issue 134.


I´m not sure about the reason for this but the series jumps back after issue 136 to the first Ditko issues, then reprints some MARVEL TEAM - UP issues before coming to the issues with the Mike Zeck covers. I think they concentrated on the issues with the Punisher in them to capitalize on his popularity and because they had already reprinted these issues earlier they made some new covers for these. Anyway, this cover is really easy to guess since you have spider - Man, Nightcrawler and the Punisher on it.


As you can see we´ve made another jump and to tell the truth I was expecting a different cover. So what´s the next MARVEL TALES cover ?


Okay, that doesn´t ring any bell. And the reason for that is that it reprints the issue I was thinking about earlier AMAZING SPIDER - MAN 162. You see, the reason why I was thinking about this issue earlier is that issues 161 and 162 of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN are reprinted in DIE SPINNE COMIC - JUBILÄUMS - SONDERHEFT NR 1, a special 48 page comic celebrating 20 years of Spider - Man in Germany and since they had to choose one cover they decided to go with issue 162 because it´s obviously the better cover.
 

There are still a few Mike Zeck MARVEL TALES issues to cover.


This is another case where I wasn´t familiar with the original cover which is probably due to the fact that I stopped buying ESSENTIAL SPIDER - MAN with volume 7 which only goes to AMAZING SPIDER - MAN issue 160. So I had to use GRAND COMICS DATABASE for all of the following ones.


Mike Zeck draws a mean Punisher. Too bad the big publishers don´t have any idea what to do with him but maybe that´s for the better considering how bad their current output is. Maybe he would be better off doing his creator owned thing. At least Disney brought out the MIKE ZECK CLASSIC MARVEL STORIES ARTIST EDITION but so far I have only seen it at one online comic shop and with a price of more than 150 EUROS I´d have to sell a kidney to buy it. Anyone know somebody who doesn´t need his ?


Now I didn´t immediately make the connection but I was a bit surprised that MARVEL TALES 218 reprints AMAZING SPIDER - MAN issue 201.


Because the cover to MARVEL TALES 219 looks more like the cover above.


The only way I can explain that is that Mike Zeck decided to switch these because he had a good alternative idea he could use for the cover of issue 201 but could not come up with a new layout for the cover of issue 202.  


With MARVEL TALES 220 we make the jump to a different Spider book.


It´s a reprint of PETER PARKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER - MAN 81 guest starring the team of Cloak & Dagger who were very popular when I was still reading comics in the german translation from Condor Verlag.


Which is probably why they were put in this story with the Punisher.


The last few original covers really are not that convincing to me.


Maybe it´s just me but I think Mike Zeck was born to draw the Punisher. Has a guy in handcuffs ever looked so menacing only by standing there ?


Compared to that the original cover is just all over the place.


And that´s all for Today. I still have a few covers from MARVEL TALES and the issues they reprinted but for me Mike Zeck deserves his own post.

The title of Today´s post was taken from the movie Twice - Told Tales from 1963 starring Vincent Price. Funny enough the title of the movie was taken from the short story collection in 2 volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne which was published under that name. It was chosen since the stories in the collections had been previously published in magazines and annuals just like the stories in Marvel Tales. The movietells three stories of which only two were actually written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dr. Heidegger´s Experiment and Rappacchini´s Daughter of which only the first one was published in Twice - Told Tales. The movie might seem a bit tame to Today´s oversaturated audiences but if you have the chance watch it.



One of Mike Zeck´s best works without any doubt and one of THE best Spider - Man stories PERIOD is Kraven´s Last Hunt by J. M. DeMatteis. I´m probably going to do a DEATH IN COMICS post about it somewhere along the line but until then here is a motion comic about the saga.



Okay, I really have to start taking deleting bookmarks once I have posted them more seriously because this is the second time I had to replace the original video because I have already posted it. Anyway, this one stays.



I already posted the original verson of this so here is the german video. It goes more into detail about collecting comics to invest for my taste but it´s the only german comic video that included comic books from Marvel.



I think my readers deserve a break from all the lip sync battle videos so I went back - and quite a lot back to tell the truth - to go over the last casting show videos I posted to find out that it´s the guy´s turn again. And because of Twice - Told Tales I think Superstition fits just fine.



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Today the korean knockout from Canada with the superbendable hardbody who put the t and a in TNA, Gail Kim celebrates her 39th birthday.


Today is also Andy Sidaris´ birthday but since I re - posted most of the stuff about him in my post on Dona Speir I don´t see any need to rehash it so soon. But before you think you have dogded a bullet again let me say that we will have legs in this post, breasts and buttocks, a whole lot of buttocks. Now with my obsession about asian hotties you might think I already did a post about Gail Kim but as always I kept putting it off.

So this comes at possibly the worst time for me since I haven´t watched any wrestling show since my Mom came from Spain last year. She always hogs the television so you watch what she watches or you have to watch whatever you want to watch somewhere else or something else which is one of the reasons why I watch so many shows from the internet or on DVD boxes. My brother used to watch wrestling with me but they have managed to schedule every wrestling show so that somebody who works regularly can´t watch it and I haven´t seen wrestling for months. And to tell the truth I don´t miss it. It´s always the same - especially the WWE´s " sports entertainment " crap - and the only thing I miss is the TNA´s knockout division. Usually I look for those clips on the internet but I have also fallen behind in that department and my laptop is filled to the brim with Hammer horror movie starring Hazel Court, Yvonne Romain and Vincent Price and I have to watch those before I can download other stuff.


So I´m not really caught up on all the going ons at TNA ( I don´t even know if they still exist ) and the last time I watched it Gail Kim had come back after being pummeled by Taryn Terrell and the Dollhouse. There were some fights where she was supposed to go one on one against Taryn Terrell but of course the other members of the Dollhouse kept interfering and managed to weaken Gail Kim so that Taryn dominated her with ease.

By the way, it´s not just my imagination, right ? Taryn´s boobs have gotten seriously bigger since she joined the Dollhouse. XXXL sized.


Coming back to Gail Kim for a moment ( yes, I know, it´s impossible to write about Gail Kim and not to mention Taryn Terrell, but we´ll come to that later ) initially I just wanted to write a short pice about her that I could attach to the regular comic related post on her birthday but then I went looking for some animated GIFs and the post got longer and long and it quickly became apparent that I would not be able to add this to on.

 
And that´s with keeping in mind that I couldn´t download most of the GIFs I found because they were on some strange website where they appear as a video instead of a GIF and when you try to download the video you can only download it as a internet HTML file which is a helpful for making a post like an ice cream cone on the Vesuv. Now I thought about adding some info from Gail Kim´s bio but you can find that on wikipedia and hundreds of wrestling sites if you want to read that.


I don´t know what it is but asian girls are my kryptonite. Now I don´t want to resort to sexual stereotypes but they just have the extra oomph that works better than viagra and makes you hear " Me so horny me love you long time ! " in your head. Gail Kim is a very gifted athlete - and I mean that without any pun - but when I see how worked up she gets in the ring, the fire in her eyes when she plays the heel or the kind of punishment her body can take and especially how flexible she is ....... 


As long as she gives her opponents a taste of " defeet " I don´t care. I know I am not supposed to like her when she plays the bad girl but her tight body just distracts me, like when she ambushed Velvet Sky after Velvet had won the championship and her boobs almost fell out of her top.


Or when she uses her legs to choke her opponent while the ref counts.


And just check out Gail´s incredible glutes. Now if these cheeks don´t get you to rise fully erect you are either gay or dead so check your pulse.


Now the name " Gail " sounds like " geil " the german word for horny. So you can imagine that she´s only known in Germany as die geile Kim ( horny Kim ). Like Kylie Minogue has been christened die Geile Minogue.


But being " gail " is not the only thing those exotic sexbombs have in common  as Gail Kim looks right at home as the star of a burlesque show and I bet she got some awesome stripper moves she could teach Kylie.


There have been some epic matches between Gail Kim and Taryn Terrell where both of them went really crazy. At first Gail had the upper hand because of her experience but Taryn made up for that with sheer enthusiasm and she´s a fast learner so she also got a few good licks in.


Now Taryn Terrell started out as a referee for the knockouts division and I have to say that her referee uniform is still my favorite of all her outfits.


Especially Taryn´s bonerinducing short shorts were a sight to behold.


Whenever Taryn slid across the ring on all four it made just want to jump on top of her and ride her firm butt to Laramie like they say in Germany.


Like I said, her outfits as a knockout were not half as sexy as that.


But she more than made up for that on the swimsuit photoshoots.


Then Taryn Terrell became the champion for a while and if you compare her from that phase with later you can´t deny there´s a growth spurt. 


The whole thing with the Dollhouse ( the asian chick from the group could be a real sexbomb if she was willing to slut it up with a different outfit but I guess it´s forbidden to outshine the great Taryn Terrell ), I know it´s supposed to make things more interesting but let´s face it, this was old when the Beautiful People did it years ago and also Taryn attacking Gail Kim in her personal life and going after her husband is nothing new. Like the NEW 52 it´s designed to excite me but I just find it just boring.


But who knows ? Since I haven´t seen any wrestling shows for over six months the whole thing with Taryn Terrell and the Dollhouse may be over and Gail Kim may have returned as the new TNA knockouts champion.


So I´m off to watch more Hammer movies in the hopes that I can soon find out what´s going on with TNA wrestling and if Gail Kim is still competing. Until then Happy Birthday Gail and Many Happy Returns !


Originally I wanted to post another of the great battles between Gail Kim and Taryn Terrell but since it´s apparently impossible to find videos with fights in good quality on YouTube we´ll have to settle for this one.



Since this post is about no comic series in particular I want to inaugurate the argentinian comic documentary series Continuara ( to be continued ) with the cult comic series Cybersix by Carlos Trillo and Carlos Meglia.



Today is also the birthday of german musicians Laith Al - Deen ( 44 ) and Stefan Waggershausen ( 67 ) but I choose to go with german musician, comedian and actor Heinz Erhardt. Unlike most german comedian Heinz´ intelligent humor was mainly based on the ability to make fun of himself not of others and he also starred in a lot of movies like The Oil Prince from Karl May with Stewart Granger and Mario Girotti a.k.a. Terence Hill.



Today would also have been the 54th birthday of Dwayne McDuffie who had a big hand in DC´s MILESTONE universe and the Justice League cartoon. Since I´m always trying to get more Legion on the blog I chose Far from Home where three Justice Leaguers visit the 31st century.



Ah, you just knew there was a Yaya Han video coming at the end of the post. Anyway, I´m mixing it up a bit with Yaya cosplaying as SUPER SONICO. No, I have no idea who that is but I could use a nurse like that.



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Well, this would have worked so much better if 68 years ago little Doug Moench had waited one more day to enter this world  but any excuse to post something about SHANG CHI : MASTER OF KUNG FU is welcome.


Of course Doug Moench wrote more than just this series but he came onto the title with issue 20 and his writing together with the stunning art by Paul Gulacy gave the title new life. He wrote the book until issue 122 ( only skipping issues 64 and 121 ) so he wrote most of it including the part with Mike Zeck as regular artist which is the part I´m most interested in. 


Don´t get me wrong, the entire series is one of the best - if not THE best - Bronze Age series Marvel has ever produced but I´m just a bigger fan of Mike Zeck than of Paul Gulacy. And I have read all of Paul Gulacy´s issues for THE HANDS OF SHANG - CHI, MASTER OF KUNG FU or rather the spanish translation of it since those were the first issues that were reprinted in a collected edition some decades ago. Now that I think of it most of what I read of the series has been in the spanish translation since I still haven´t started reading the original issues I bought the last years.


Anyway, back to the spanish version, the Mike Zeck issues never got the special treatment of a collection but I don´t know if that was because it was too soon after the issues had been published by Vertice or if they felt it wasn´t worth the effort. In any case, since Mike Zeck started as regular penciler with issue 59 he will probbaly not appear in the new omnibus editions Disney is putting out until the final pages of the second volume.


Back to Doug Moench, he also wrote issues 20 to 43 of one of Marvel´s most famous Bronze Age horror series WEREWOLF BY NIGHT where he co - created Moon Knight with artist Don Perlin. By the way, Moon Knight´s costume is not white as many people erroneously think but silver - like his weapons - because he was created as a foil for werewolf Jack Russell .


Or is it ? The Moon Knight character was so popular with readers that he guest starred in a few other Marvel titles ( like SPECTACULAR SPIDER - MAN 22 and 23 which had art by Mike Zeck ) before he finally got his own series where almost everything from his first appearance - including his origin - was totally revised. The series lasted until issue 38 and was also written mostly by Doug Moench. There was a second series in 1985 called MOON KNIGHT - FIST OF KHONSHU of which I found the first five issues at a comic convention only to find out later that it had been canceled with issue 6. The art was by penciler Chris Warner and inker E. R. Cruz whom I knew from Heroic Publishing´s CAPTAIN THUNDER AND BLUE BOLT series.


This is the first series I read in the original american version because they were the first US comics that made their way to the newsstand at the Rathaus bus station in Ludwigsburg before they got any issues of IRON MAN, ROM SPACEKNIGHT or SUPERMAN. Man, I loved the art but I don´t think I ever got the complete run of the series. Boy, does anybody except me remember the other Heroic Publishing series like CHAMPIONS, MARKSMAN, MURCIELAGA THE SHE - BAT, THE TIGRESS or FLARE ?  


Okay, before I got totally off topic I was talking about the series Doug Moench wrote at Marvel which are too many to list them all because not only did he write series like THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER, SHOGUN WARRIORS or GODZILLA : KING OF MONSTERS, he also worked on a lot of their black and white magazines, most notably DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU, DRACULA LIVES, MONSTERS UNLEASHED and PLANET OF THE APES. 


One last thing I have to mention about Doug Moench´s tenure at Marvel is that he co - created my favorite killer cyborg Deathlok with artist Rich Buckler. I still can´t believe that I didn´t catch on sooner who the character of Mike Peterson on Marvel´s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D was. 


I know I´m skipping over a lot of his series like SIX FROM SIRIUS, the creator owned comic he did with Paul Gulacy at Marvel´s EPIC imprint but otherwise I´ll never finish this post. Over at DC Doug wrote also a ridiculous amount of series, among them the second volume of THE SPECTRE which had Gene Colan as an artist for the first issues. I got some of them at Erlangen but I never got that far in my convention diary.


And speaking about Gene Colan, he was also the artist on BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS when Doug Moench was writing those titles.


I remember there was this whole story arc with Nocturna where Alfredo Alcala did the inks. Now his inks were a bit heavy and some of Gene Colan´s art was overpowered but it still looked cool to my younger self. 


Doug Moench also wrote a whole slew of other Bat - related titles like THE BATMAN CHRONICLES, BATMAN HONG KONG, LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT, BATMAN : OUTLAWS, BATMAN VS PREDATOR II ( again with artist Paul Gulacy ), and the Elseworlds BOOK OF THE DEAD, BROTHERHOOD OF THE BAT, DARK JOKER : THE WILD, BATMAN & DRACULA : RED RAIN, BATMAN : BLOODSTORM, CRIMSON MIST and HAUNTED GOTHAM.


Other DC series I want to mention are ARION, BLACKHAWK, C.O.P.S., LORDS OF THE ULTRA - REALM, MISTER MIRACLE, OMEGA MEN, SLASH MARAUD and the Legion of Super - Heroes spin off title THE WANDERERS.


Well, the post ended up being a bit shorter than planned, mostly because I started very late and I was furthermore distracted for a while by an unexpected find of many pages from CAPTAIN THUNDER AND BLUE BOLT.


Since Today is also Erich Kästner´s birthday but to all who expected more literary content I want to mention that it´s also porn actress Dylan Dyder´s 35th birthday so count yourself lucky I didn´t go that route.

Speaking about birthdays, Today was also the anniversary of Terence Fisher, director of such Hammer movies as The Curse of Frankenstein and The Man Who Could Cheat Death but since I have nothing new to add to my post on Hazel Court I only want to mention that there is a nude scene in the last one although I think you only see Hazel from behind. You DO see a statue of her in the film though and the bust is going full frontal.

And one final thing where celebrity birthdays are concerned : Yesterday was the 48th birthday of sci fi cult siren Jeri Ryan but since I also have nothing new to add I´m leaving you with the link to last year´s post . 


So let´s start with the links which are quite a few for this post. First up I AM THE PHANTOM STRANGER has posts on issue 2 and issue 3 of Doug Moench´s THE SPECTRE where the Phantom Stranger is guest - starring.

DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND offers The Crystal Connection by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy from Master of Kung Fu 29 and I´m not entirely sure if I have already posted The Phoenix and The Dragon ( issue 86 ), The Chrysalis and The Peacock ( issue 87 ), The Leopard and The Dove ( issue 88 ) and The Dragons ( issue 89 ) from the Warriors of The Golden Dawn Saga by Doug Moench, Mike Zeck and Gene Day. There are also a posts with splash pages from Gene Colan´s Tomb of Dracula and Gene Colan´s Daredevil and for more Kung Fu action check out GIANT - SIZED MARVEL´s posts on Marvel Kung Fu . Tom Field did an interview with Gene Colan for issue 13 of COMIC BOOK ARTIST and legendary Roy Thomas also interviewed Gene Colan for issue 6 of ALTER EGOboth of  them can be found in the spanish version in this post by El Tio Berni on ENTRECOMICS.


Since I know how much my readers like the Top Ten lists Tom Field at WEDNESDAY`S HEROES brings us the Top Ten Gene Colan covers and you can see a lot of Gene Colan´s original art on this post by Bob McLeod.

DC COMICS ARTIST has a list of everybody who drew Bronze Age Batman.

There´s an entry about The Tomb of Dracula on HORRORPEDIA by Mondozilla as well as on TALES FROM THE LONGBOX and an invaluable resource is THE THOUGHT BALLOON which has issue by issue synopsises and reviews of The Tomb of Dracula with a lengthy introduction to the series . Last but not least SCANS DAILY has a post with Gene Colan scans from issue 34 of Tomb of Dracula and issue 5 of the Tomb of Dracula mag in which Dracula squares off against daughter Lilith who has a peculiar dress sense which earns her a special feature on COMICS ALLIANCE .


I´m starting the video section of Today´s post with the dubbed german version of the PBS documentary Superheroes - The Neverending Battle.

And it really is a neverending battle for me because I keep putting the video on the blog and YouTube keeps deleting it. So here´s another try.



No, the following video doesn´t have anything to do with the topic of the post, I just wanted to post this funny video with Jessica Nigri cosplaying as Freddy Krüger. I know that there are people out there who take offence when she´s gender bending because " she´s not keeping it real " but I say anybody who does not think that this is totally Airwolf needs to be hosed down. As does anybody who uses the words " keeping it real ", seriously.

Cosplaying is about creativity and having fun and if people are clamoring for a black Captain America, a gay Herkules and a female Thor THIS is really small potatoes. I´m not saying that Jessica´s potatoes are small.


Man, I just walked right into that. Anyway, the animated GIF about was the smallest I could find and normally I try to post a big one but I will keep them for a cosplay spotlight post on Jessica Nigri - if I ever get around to do it. But until then you can find eight high quality GIFs on this post .



And on the horrific note I wanted to add a television special with Vincent Price from 1979 that dramatizes three classic children´s books stories.



Since there has been no Master of Kung Fu or Moon Knight cartoon I decided to pick an animated short I just recently discovered : a collaboration between Walt Disney and the great Salvador Dali.



I´m going to end Today´s post with Dami Im who auditioned on The X Factor Australia in 2013. There will be more of her in upcoming posts.



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 I´ve often said I don´t believe in coincidences so you can make what you want about the fact that in my post about Gail Kim honoring her brithday a few days back I included the trailer for the Karl May movie Der Ölprinz because Heinz Erhardt was in it ( he also was born that day ) as if I knew I would come back to that subject Today, on Karl May´s birthday.


I have written about Karl May and the Winnetou movies in a few posts so I decided to write a bit about the comics since this is still a comic blog despite posts about movies, wrestling and hot movie and tv cult sirens.

Karl May is one of the most read german authors and the most translated one. He was probably the earliest german author to achieve rockstar like status which may have been in part because he claimed to be the Old Shatterhand narrator from his novels going as far as having gunsmiths build the famous rifles Bärentöter ( Bearkiller ), Silberbüchse ( Silverrifle ) and the Henrystutzen ( Henrycarbine ) from his books. Now when I think about Karl May the first thing I think about is of course the westerns of Winnetou, Old Shatterhand and Old Surehand but I never read much of the comic adaptions so I had to do some research. There are two names that you will most likely encounter when you look for WINNETOU comics.

The first one is Helmut Nickel who did the best and most commercially successful comic adaptions which were first published by the Walter Lehning Verlag between 1963 and 1966 in the regular comic book format. 


Not only had Helmut Nickel been a big fan of Karl May since infancy he also had studied ethnology which he brought into his work. His body language is impeccable, he always gave the different native american tribes distinctive features and he integrated nature and the landscapes - which were always a big part of Karl May´s travel reports - in his pages.


Originally Helmut Nickel wanted to become a veterinarian but because he wasn´t allowed to study in East Berlin he moved to West Berlin where he found out that his prefered course of study was not offered at the free academy so he chose ethnology, pre - colombian culture and art history.

To finance his studies he worked for an advertising studio where he came into contact with the comic publisher Gerstmayer. Beginning in 1954 he drew wild west stories, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Christo and the futuristic Titanus based on a novel trilogy by Claus Eigk.


At the same time he created the series Don Pedro about the conquest of the Aztec empire by Hernando Cortez which was integrated as a back up series in Hot Jerry. All these comics didn´t have a long life span which was about to change when Helmut Nickel took charge of the comic series Robinson in 1955. During the second half of the 1950s Robinson was the only successful competition to the Lehning Verlag which dominated the market of adventure comics with its house artist Hansrudi Wäscher.    


Nickel´s art captivated german readers with perfect compositions, great perspectives and varied graphics but the content might have been too much for the audience of children ages eight to fourteen. " Too text - heavy ! " was one of the main criticisms of the publisher. After his studies Helmut Nickel moved to New York where he worked as the curator of the Arms and Armor division of the New Yorker Metroploitan Museum. At the same time he took the offer of Walter Lehning to do a comic adaption of Karl May´s Winnetou stories. Nickel drew the comic until 1965 when the payments from Germany were delayed for months and then stopped.


Besides WINNETOU the Walter Lehning Verlag published OLD SUREHAND


and KARA BEN NEMSI ( he´s Old Shatterhand ), both Karl May properties.


I could not find any info on who did the art on those books but later on OLD SUREHAND and KARA BEN NEMSI were published with KIT CARSON.


Helmut Nickel´s WINNETOU comic series was first reprinted by the SPLITTER Verlag in a album sized hardcover edition from 1989 to 1994.


From 2012 to 2013 Verlag Sackmann und Hörndl a.k.a. comicplus+ did another hardcover edition with a limited print run of 1,000 copies.


And because 2012 marked Karl May´s one hundredth birthday they did an over 400 pages thick special for the masses that include the first two volumes from the limited edition print run - without the editorial pages. 


Now the Helmut Nickel WINNETOU was not the first comic adaption as you can see by the FIX UND FOXY cover on the top of this post. I´m not sure when this particular issue came out but it must have been before 1953 when the Zeichenfilmbuch comic by Walter Neugebauer was reprinted.


In 1975 the swiss comic company Gevacur AG published KARL MAY EXTRA which presented the Winnetou series by spanish artist Juan Arranz. 


This series was republished in a limited edition by comicplus+ in 2013.


Condor also published Winnetou in KARL MAY from 1976 to 1977.


And from 1977 to 1979 Condor published WINNETOU UND OLD SHATTERHAND by spanish comic artist Juan Lopez Ramon. 


The next Winnetou comic came out by Wick from 1999 to 2007 although it had little to do with Karl May. The art is by belgian Willy Vandersteen who also did the very successful SUSKE EN WISKE ( published in english as Spike and Suzy, Luke and Luzy, Willy and Wanda or Bob and Bobette ).


And this is the second name you will probably come across when looking for Karl May comics. The series was published by Standaard Uitgeverij from 1962 to 1987 and the only thing the comics have in common with the Karl May books are the names of the main characters. Despite all this the series was successful enough to last 83 issues which is no small feat.
 

Although the studio of Willy Vandersteen was not new to western comics as they produced the BESSY comics which were a big thing in Germany.


And speaking about comics which were big when I was a kid, when superheroes and especially Batman became hugely popular in Belgium and Germany thanks to the campy tv series Willy Vandersteen was asked to create a comic series to capitalize on that trend so he turned the strongman from the SUSKE EN WISKE comics Jerome into a superhero.

The comic was called WASTL in Germany and between 1968 and 1972 a total of 173 stories were produced with a print run of 150,000 at the height of its popularity. Sadly due to the declining quality of the stories the series ended much to my chagrin as I was heavily into that series.


In 2011 there also was a tribute book to Helmut Nickel by Edition 52. 


And although it was not available to the general public I should mention that the german comic organisation INCOS released a WINNETOU UND OLD SHATTERHAND comic album in 2012. It was limited to 200 copies and contained a comic by hungarian artist Ernö Zorad which was first published in 1983 in the east german youth publication TROMMEL. 


Lastly there was a Kara Ben Nemsi comic by Unipart from 1975 to 1976. 


There also were some foreign editions like in Spain but the post is long enough with only the german publications. And I want to do other things Today ( like drool about Elke Sommer´s cleavage in Unter Geiern ).


And speaking about impressive cleavages from my youth : since I didn´t post Yesterday I couldn´t give a shout out to Playmate of the Month April in 1986, Teri Weigel who celebrated her 54th birthday. Because of Teri´s perplexing physique and her protruding torpedo shaped sweater puppies she became quite popular and was in a few specials from PLAYBOY. She also was one of the few playmates who also appeared in PENTHOUSE although not as a Pet of the Month. She was just everywhere during the 80s. She later had her breasts enlarged and did porn but I think she looked best in her famous appearances as Jade on Married with Children.


Since we´re on the subject of centerfolds and birthdays I have to mention another Andy Sidaris related anniversary. Penthouse Pet Samatha Phillips who played Samatha Maxx, the buxom blonde with the high squirt factor in The Dallas Connection ( a.k.a. Deadworks ) and who holds the record for getting her nude pictures published in the most countries turns 50.


Well - rounded in more than just the physical sense, Sam is a woman for the new millenium : she´s ambitious and she´s busy and not above using her spectacular naked body as fame currency. Sam has been a member of an all girl rock group, The Lykettes, a talk show host. a reality tv host, radio DJ, a spokesmodel, she has hosted any kind of show that exists on the planet and she became a pop icon as one of the most sought after models of the 80s. However the walking blow up sex doll template reaped the greatest exposure in the realm of sexploitation quickie flicks thanks to her rack - tastic 34D - 26 - 35 measurements and she´s famous for producing the Busty Cops movies starring all her centerfold friends.

Sadly she was only in one Andy Sidaris movie but you can see her naked in classics like Hot Springs Hotel, Passion Cove, Bedtime Stories, Fallen Angel, The Regina Pierce Affair, Passion´s Obsession and Sexual Malice. 


Our first video is a documentary about the author Karl May.



On Karl May´s 100th birthday in 2012 this special edition of Nachtstudio took a look at the relationship between the germans and Karl May.



And because I had to include cult siren Elke Sommer in some way here is the trailer for Unter Geiern ( Among Vultures ) also starring Götz George and Terence Hill ( still under his name as Mario Girotti ). Like always Pierre Brice played Winnetou but instead of Old Shatterhand played by Lex Barker he teamed up with Old Surehand played by Stewart Granger who reprise the role two more times and got a lot of german fans from this.



There also was a Winnetou cartoon although I could only find a short bit.



Naturally the germans had to make a political correct version for new audiences called WinneToons which naturally is one big crapfest.



Originally I wanted to add the movie Durch die Wüste from 1936 but since the embedding was disabled for that video I´m going to include german - british Schlager singer Ireen Sheer who celebrates her 67th birthday Today. In 1974 she represented Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest but here she is with Feuer which gained Germany a sixth place.



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Since Today is Norm Breyfogle´s 56th ammiversary I spent most of the day looking for new things to post. First I checked February last year but I didn´t get to do a post on his birthday because of my own health issues.


Speaking about health issues I should address that Norm Breyfogle is still recovering from the stroke he suffered although I could not find a definite account of his current condition in 2016. I mentioned this in my post on the Phantom Stranger last Halloween and also the LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT : NORM BREYFOGLE hardcover that DC has put out to help Norm.

Like I said, I don´t have any information how he is right now but if you have already bought this and still want to help Norm in some way there is currently a petition underway at CHANGE.ORG for Marvel to reprint Norm Breyfogle´s work in a collected edition which you can sign and share too.

Now since my last post on Norm Breyfogle´s birthday I have managed to track down and read most of the books on my wanted list. I got all his issues of PRIME, the few BLOODSHOT issues he did, I think I got all his issues of THE SPECTRE and LOBO issue 51. There might be some issues from OF BITTER SOULS I don´t know but besides the first trade I could not find any material. The same goes for the DANGER`S DOZEN series.

Lately I have been occupied with reprint series so I wanted to see if there are german comics that contain any Norm Breyfogle BATMAN stuff but he got on the bat books at the tailends of when Ehapa folded so there are only a few issues that made it into the actual BATMAN TASCHENBUCH.


Now thanks to the machine lettering and the font size not a lot of the original text survived but the binding on those is surprisingly resilient.

I still have most of my old Taschenbücher from Ehapa and while the older ones are more a loose leaf collection the " newer " ones hold up pretty good. Those are not rare so you should be able to find them at a good price and they are definitely worth their money. Especially the BATMAN SUPER DREI which was Ehapa´s way of recycling old material by sticking three previously published pocket books together. I´ve been looking through those to find some Norm Breyfogle stuff but since he was only in two Taschenbücher to begin with I didn´t find much. One of these days I´ll have to do a post on the BATMAN SUPER DREI comics and the companion book SUPERMAN SUPER DREI ( one of those even contained Alan Moore´s great Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow ? ).

One book I´m always forgetting is the SHADOW OF THE BAT series and Ehapa published at least the first issues with Norm Breyfogle art in their Ehapa Comic Collcetion line. They are in the regular american comic book format and you can find them at a reasonable price at any comic shop.


So after Ehapa closed its doors the next publisher to do DC comics in Germany was the Norbert Hethke Verlag. This was right when I was doing my military service in Munich because of which I had access to a real comic shop - JÜRGEN`S COMIC SHOP - for the first time in my life.

While my time at the Deutsche Bundeswehr was not my favorite of times comic wise it was one of my absolute highlights. There were three outlets available to me, the first one was the aforementioned comic shop, where I went as soon as we were finished for the day. They had the actual stuff and a lot of american comics with a lot of back issues and I spend a lot of time there. Then there was a newsstand on the way to the comic shop or back to the barracks where they had american comics from the last three months or so. And finally there was a newsstands at the train station in Munich where I passed every time I came in to the barracks or went home. They had older issues so I went there to look for issues of series that I had discovered in the other two shops which they didn´t have. So there were some books where I got the Hethke comics but most of them were books where the american issues were not available anymore like the new Justice League or Green Arrow - Longbow Hunter. With the bat books I found a lot of Norm Breyfogle´s issues with the american comics so I didn´t get a lot of the Hethke Bände but if you want to read Norm Breyfogle´s issues in german this is where you will find the bulk of it.


And I guess that´s it. Neither Dino nor Panini has gone back to that particular period of the bat periodicals and I haven´t seen any of those books in the official DC collection Hachette is publishing in Germany.

There is one last bat related mini series I have to mention before ending the post ( I´m having trouble keeping my eyes open and my laptop is starting to act up ) : ANARKY. I´m always planning to get the trades but because I have some of the issues in german and I can´t never find them I keep putting it off. This first mini series is highly recommended and it was published in Germany by Dino Verlag in issue 6 of BATMAN SPECIAL.  


There are some Superman stories by Norm Breyfogle in Dino´s SUPERMAN issue 60, issue 70 and SUPERMAN SPECIAL 11 and the Captain America story from MARVEL FANFARE in Condor´s HULK COMIC TASCHENBUCH 23. 


And with that we have all of Norm Breyfogle´s publications in german covered but I don´t want to end without a few samples of his great art.


There are also a few links I have to add to the post : Dan Greenfield at the 13TH DIMENSION has a 13 cover salute to Norm Breyfogle who takes up five days of COMIC BOOK RESOURCES´ Year of the Artist archive with entries on MARVEL FANFARE 29 ( thanks for the Captain America page ), WHISPER 10 , BATMAN ( D´uh ! ), HELLCAT 2 and OF BITTER SOULS 2 .

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