The more things change the more things stay the same, as the french say, so it should not surprise you that in the first post of 2017 I am still dealing with stuff I had planned to do back in 2016 but did not get around to do.
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Now if you are a regular reader of the blog you know that I have not been totally inactive these past few days and that indeed there HAVE been new posts but they have disappeared from the blog after being finished.
Well, the reason for that is simple : those were cult siren re - posts which I wrote in advance and which will be on the blog at the proper date. As I have mentioned a few times I don´t always feel in the mood to talk about comics and rather than delivering an uninspired and probably boring post I write one of these. Also, it helps to get more regular content on the blog as they should be quick to write. I´m saying quick because that is not always the case. Anyway, there are five celebrity birthdays where I did an updated version for this year in advance. There is one where I just went over last year´s post because there really was nothing new to add and the last one - well, since I already did posts on that particular celebrity for a few years I will decide if it warrants a new post when the time comes. I also found a few new clips of a real life Power Girl that I want to include in the next few posts but I want to do a few animated GIFs and because of the video size I have to make them frame by frame so that is on the back burner. In any case, I have most of the cult siren posts for this month covered - unless something unexpected comes up which so far always happened - and I´m trying to not overdo it with the hot sexbombs. The biggest problem will be to do the posts in - between on a regular basis.
Because lately I have tried to get out of bed earlier and do the posts in the daytime but as you can see from the lack of posts since December that has not worked out so far. I really have no idea how to improve that as I also have not been feeling too well since Christmas. Speaking about Christmas, that is another thing that fell totally flat and I´m not meaning just The Big Christmas Contest which did not happen. All year long I am on the lookout for good material for different posts and after collecting a lot of stuff in a special CHRISTMAS folder I did not even get to do one proper Christmas post. Okay, over the last 10 years I have done enough Christmas posts but still it would have been nice to do something special this year.
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That is also one of the reasons why I haven´t done a look back on 2016 - there is not much to add. Although there may be a post in the next few weeks about what 2017 holds in store for us because quite frankly the comics that have excited me most are those coming in 2017 starting with the new BATMAN & THE OUTSIDERS hardcover at the end of February.
![]()
The monthly titles I still read can be counted on the fingers of one hand and I am slowly but surely leaving the big two behind wrapping up my trade reading list. At Marvel I am now officially done with DAREDEVIL so the only title I´m following is SILVER SURFER - for the moment. It is THE best Doctor Who comic without Doctor Who in it and as long as we don´t get Mike Allred on a proper Doctor Who book this is as good as it gets.
![]()
Which doesn´t mean that I won´t be buying any Marvel books this year, quite the contrary. But it´s not going to be new titles. What I have on my list are trades that contain old material especially a few Epic Collections.
I know that I was not the biggest fan of the Epic Collections when the format started and there still has not been any change in the narrow gutters. But at least you can open the books up all the way and so far none of the pages have come out. Which may be the right moment to do a bit of bargain book pimping. This is more for my german readers than for anybody else as amazon Germany offers AMAZING SPIDER - MAN : COSMIC ADVENTURES and MOON KNIGHT : SHADOWS OF THE MOON for 26 EUROS.
![]()
The first collection contains all of Spider - Man´s ACTS OF VENGEANCE crossovers so if you want to read those stories and don´t want to cough up 100 shekels for the omnibus hardcover here is your chance. The art is the usual mix of Erik Larsen, Sal Buscema and Alex Saviuk from that time with a bit of Gil Kane thrown in for good measure. The final piece of resistance however is the MOON KNIGHT Epic Collection. Most of the 19 issues are drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz and you can see him evolve from a great Neal Adams clone to the artist he would become on NEW MUTANTS.
![]()
Both of these books clock in at over 500 pages and do I have to mention that they usually go for around 40 bucks ? There a five copies left of each.
![]()
Speaking of NEW MUTANTS, the first of the Epic Collections coming out this year I want to mention is NEW MUTANTS - RENEWAL which collects MARVEL GRAPHIC COLLECTION 4, which introduced the team and the first 12 issues of the ongoing title by Claremont, Bob McLeod and Sal Buscema.
Since I just recently completed my NEW MUTANTS CLASSIC trades I will probably not buy this myself but I cannot recommend this highly enough.
![]()
Forget the All - New, All - Different Marvel NOW stuff which is oh - so relevant and oh - so political correct. THIS is the best teen team book Marvel has ever made and there is nothing past, present or in the future coming out from Disney that comes even close. This is the gold standard that all the following titles aspired to be and failed miserably and there will never been teen mutant angst, adventure, romance or camaraderie on this level of excellency again. Chris Claremont was at the height of his game and a phenomenon onto himself writing all the mutant titles back then and the continuity was still tight like you wouldn´t believe. With the final issues of this collection Sal Buscema takes over the pencils ( well, his name is going to come up a lot when you talk about these books since he drew the entire Marvel universe at one time or another ) but the biggest chunk is glorious Bob McLeod art. He´s one of the veteran´s who doesn´t get much work lately - probably because people think his style doesn´t fit the grim and gritty realism of the Marvel NOW and DC REBIRTH worlds - but he is one of the best artists out there and I have always enjoyed his work, be it on Marvel´s merry mutants or DC´s post - Crisis Man of Tomorrow.
![]()
Back to the Epic Collections, the NEW MUTANT trade comes out on March the 21st which is one full week before the next humdinger : EXCALIBUR - THE SWORD IS DRAWN by Chris Claremont ( I told you he wrote all the mutant titles back then, didn´t I ? ) and the often underrated Alan Davis.
![]()
Now there might be some readers out there who would veto this and tell me that he did some issues of the Frank Cho Hulk abomination but while that may be true he was not the title´s first choice as regular artist. Say what you want but among all the announcements of new flashy Disney titles to dazzle the comic book reading audience the name of Alan Davis doesn´t come up very much. He is not their first choice when it comes to big series and apart from some short mini series like the recent INFINITY ENTITY by Jim Starlin fans have to search his work with a magnifying glass.
![]()
Which is one of the reasons why I´m so thrilled that EXCALIBUR finally is available to a new generation. There have been some trades but they are all out of print and if you can find one it always goes for ridiculous prices.
It is one of the cruelest jokes of fate that the title never found the large audience it deserved just because it was named EXCALIBUR instead of X - CALIBUR but for those few that didn´t let that small distinction deter them the reward has been incalculable. If you are one of the fortunate few who have discovered the series it is one of your most cherished treasures - for all else it is the best comic series you never read. Now I could go on praising the book for hours but that would be boring and in the end words really fall short to bring across the complete Airwolf - ness that is EXCALIBUR. Luckily I did a post on Alan Davis´ birthday this year with the complete EXCALIBUR SPECIAL EDITION so you can read that to wet your appetite. Apart from that special the Epic Collection has the first 11 issues of the ongoing series ( which means it stops just before The Cross Time Caper starts ) plus material from other Marvel publications.
Man, back when I did the Alan Davis birthday post I wrote that maybe this could prompt Disney to do if not an omnibus or a hardcover at least an Epic Collection and now it will happen. Now this is either an incredible coincidence or only a matter of time since they are putting out a lot of these and sooner or later there have to be some that appeal to me. But I still wonder if my constant demand to reprint certain runs has not had some kind of influence. Case in point : THOR - IN MORTAL FLESH which comes out in August and collects THOR issues 401 to 418 and ANNUAL 14.
![]()
How many posts have I written about the THOR run by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz ? How often have I mentioned that this run undeservedly gets shoved to the side when people talk about great runs on THOR because it had the misfortune to follow on the heels of Walter Simonson´s iconic THOR epos ? Heck, all the posts that I wrote about how the Eric Masterson Thor was MY Thor that is how the whole THORSDAY series started. Like with the NEW MUTANTS Epic Collection I already have all - or most of it since I am not always sure with my THOR issues - in single issue form. But I still might get this because it would look so nice on the shelf next to THOR - WAR OF THE PANTHEONS. Ah, what the heck, I will probably also buy the EXCALIBUR collection just so I don´t have to unpack my precious floppies.
![]()
Once again it is time to wrap things up for Today and while I didn´t even get started on the long road that led me to THORSDAY WITH ERIK LARSEN I did manage to write about Thor so this does qualify as a THORSDAY post.
Since Tomorrow is a holiday AND somebody in my family celebrates her birthday I don´t know if I can do a FLASH FRIDAY post so the next post - which will be post number 799 - might be the Linda Kozlowski re - post.
Before we come to the usual array of celebrity birthdays and videos I want to add a little something for the followers of the DEJA VUE section. While the cover of BATMAN & THE OUTSIDERS 10 is just one of the many covers where two groups face off against each other it is difficult to pinpoint the exact cover to which it pays homage - if indeed it does - but the cover for SILVER SURFER 5 by Mike Allred is a tribute to MARVEL TWO - IN - ONE 96.
![]()
thor you are you little rascal
birthdays
Patricia Kaas 51 not only a talented musician herself but she also discovered french rumpshaker Alizée and was her mentor
Massimo Caputi 56 whose name is totally familiar to all who have watched Quelli Che Il Calcio or L´ Isola Dei Famosi both starring italian mega MILF Simona Ventura now that I have made a separate post for Monique Sluyter and the Tutti Frutti girls I might do a shortened version of her post - since the amount of GIFs is murder on the page uploading time - and maybe add a few new GIFs
Little Richard 85
Johannes Heesters 2011 with 108 years he was what Harald Juhnke always tried to be but never achieved a talented singer and dancer and a ladies man the only thing where Harald surpassed him was the drinking but with all things in his life he didn´t manage to do it in moderation and turned into a drunkard worse than Tony Stark
Steve Wasserman 1998 one of the producers of Beverly Hills 90210 which starred Tiffani Amber Thiessen who celebrates her 43rd birthday at the 23th of this month and since I have already done her repost
Russ Manning 1981
Fritz Lang 1976
Walt Disney 1966
videos
banner
Now if you are a regular reader of the blog you know that I have not been totally inactive these past few days and that indeed there HAVE been new posts but they have disappeared from the blog after being finished.
Well, the reason for that is simple : those were cult siren re - posts which I wrote in advance and which will be on the blog at the proper date. As I have mentioned a few times I don´t always feel in the mood to talk about comics and rather than delivering an uninspired and probably boring post I write one of these. Also, it helps to get more regular content on the blog as they should be quick to write. I´m saying quick because that is not always the case. Anyway, there are five celebrity birthdays where I did an updated version for this year in advance. There is one where I just went over last year´s post because there really was nothing new to add and the last one - well, since I already did posts on that particular celebrity for a few years I will decide if it warrants a new post when the time comes. I also found a few new clips of a real life Power Girl that I want to include in the next few posts but I want to do a few animated GIFs and because of the video size I have to make them frame by frame so that is on the back burner. In any case, I have most of the cult siren posts for this month covered - unless something unexpected comes up which so far always happened - and I´m trying to not overdo it with the hot sexbombs. The biggest problem will be to do the posts in - between on a regular basis.
Because lately I have tried to get out of bed earlier and do the posts in the daytime but as you can see from the lack of posts since December that has not worked out so far. I really have no idea how to improve that as I also have not been feeling too well since Christmas. Speaking about Christmas, that is another thing that fell totally flat and I´m not meaning just The Big Christmas Contest which did not happen. All year long I am on the lookout for good material for different posts and after collecting a lot of stuff in a special CHRISTMAS folder I did not even get to do one proper Christmas post. Okay, over the last 10 years I have done enough Christmas posts but still it would have been nice to do something special this year.
That is also one of the reasons why I haven´t done a look back on 2016 - there is not much to add. Although there may be a post in the next few weeks about what 2017 holds in store for us because quite frankly the comics that have excited me most are those coming in 2017 starting with the new BATMAN & THE OUTSIDERS hardcover at the end of February.
The monthly titles I still read can be counted on the fingers of one hand and I am slowly but surely leaving the big two behind wrapping up my trade reading list. At Marvel I am now officially done with DAREDEVIL so the only title I´m following is SILVER SURFER - for the moment. It is THE best Doctor Who comic without Doctor Who in it and as long as we don´t get Mike Allred on a proper Doctor Who book this is as good as it gets.
Which doesn´t mean that I won´t be buying any Marvel books this year, quite the contrary. But it´s not going to be new titles. What I have on my list are trades that contain old material especially a few Epic Collections.
I know that I was not the biggest fan of the Epic Collections when the format started and there still has not been any change in the narrow gutters. But at least you can open the books up all the way and so far none of the pages have come out. Which may be the right moment to do a bit of bargain book pimping. This is more for my german readers than for anybody else as amazon Germany offers AMAZING SPIDER - MAN : COSMIC ADVENTURES and MOON KNIGHT : SHADOWS OF THE MOON for 26 EUROS.
The first collection contains all of Spider - Man´s ACTS OF VENGEANCE crossovers so if you want to read those stories and don´t want to cough up 100 shekels for the omnibus hardcover here is your chance. The art is the usual mix of Erik Larsen, Sal Buscema and Alex Saviuk from that time with a bit of Gil Kane thrown in for good measure. The final piece of resistance however is the MOON KNIGHT Epic Collection. Most of the 19 issues are drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz and you can see him evolve from a great Neal Adams clone to the artist he would become on NEW MUTANTS.
Both of these books clock in at over 500 pages and do I have to mention that they usually go for around 40 bucks ? There a five copies left of each.
Speaking of NEW MUTANTS, the first of the Epic Collections coming out this year I want to mention is NEW MUTANTS - RENEWAL which collects MARVEL GRAPHIC COLLECTION 4, which introduced the team and the first 12 issues of the ongoing title by Claremont, Bob McLeod and Sal Buscema.
Since I just recently completed my NEW MUTANTS CLASSIC trades I will probably not buy this myself but I cannot recommend this highly enough.
Forget the All - New, All - Different Marvel NOW stuff which is oh - so relevant and oh - so political correct. THIS is the best teen team book Marvel has ever made and there is nothing past, present or in the future coming out from Disney that comes even close. This is the gold standard that all the following titles aspired to be and failed miserably and there will never been teen mutant angst, adventure, romance or camaraderie on this level of excellency again. Chris Claremont was at the height of his game and a phenomenon onto himself writing all the mutant titles back then and the continuity was still tight like you wouldn´t believe. With the final issues of this collection Sal Buscema takes over the pencils ( well, his name is going to come up a lot when you talk about these books since he drew the entire Marvel universe at one time or another ) but the biggest chunk is glorious Bob McLeod art. He´s one of the veteran´s who doesn´t get much work lately - probably because people think his style doesn´t fit the grim and gritty realism of the Marvel NOW and DC REBIRTH worlds - but he is one of the best artists out there and I have always enjoyed his work, be it on Marvel´s merry mutants or DC´s post - Crisis Man of Tomorrow.
Back to the Epic Collections, the NEW MUTANT trade comes out on March the 21st which is one full week before the next humdinger : EXCALIBUR - THE SWORD IS DRAWN by Chris Claremont ( I told you he wrote all the mutant titles back then, didn´t I ? ) and the often underrated Alan Davis.
Now there might be some readers out there who would veto this and tell me that he did some issues of the Frank Cho Hulk abomination but while that may be true he was not the title´s first choice as regular artist. Say what you want but among all the announcements of new flashy Disney titles to dazzle the comic book reading audience the name of Alan Davis doesn´t come up very much. He is not their first choice when it comes to big series and apart from some short mini series like the recent INFINITY ENTITY by Jim Starlin fans have to search his work with a magnifying glass.
Which is one of the reasons why I´m so thrilled that EXCALIBUR finally is available to a new generation. There have been some trades but they are all out of print and if you can find one it always goes for ridiculous prices.
It is one of the cruelest jokes of fate that the title never found the large audience it deserved just because it was named EXCALIBUR instead of X - CALIBUR but for those few that didn´t let that small distinction deter them the reward has been incalculable. If you are one of the fortunate few who have discovered the series it is one of your most cherished treasures - for all else it is the best comic series you never read. Now I could go on praising the book for hours but that would be boring and in the end words really fall short to bring across the complete Airwolf - ness that is EXCALIBUR. Luckily I did a post on Alan Davis´ birthday this year with the complete EXCALIBUR SPECIAL EDITION so you can read that to wet your appetite. Apart from that special the Epic Collection has the first 11 issues of the ongoing series ( which means it stops just before The Cross Time Caper starts ) plus material from other Marvel publications.
Man, back when I did the Alan Davis birthday post I wrote that maybe this could prompt Disney to do if not an omnibus or a hardcover at least an Epic Collection and now it will happen. Now this is either an incredible coincidence or only a matter of time since they are putting out a lot of these and sooner or later there have to be some that appeal to me. But I still wonder if my constant demand to reprint certain runs has not had some kind of influence. Case in point : THOR - IN MORTAL FLESH which comes out in August and collects THOR issues 401 to 418 and ANNUAL 14.
How many posts have I written about the THOR run by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz ? How often have I mentioned that this run undeservedly gets shoved to the side when people talk about great runs on THOR because it had the misfortune to follow on the heels of Walter Simonson´s iconic THOR epos ? Heck, all the posts that I wrote about how the Eric Masterson Thor was MY Thor that is how the whole THORSDAY series started. Like with the NEW MUTANTS Epic Collection I already have all - or most of it since I am not always sure with my THOR issues - in single issue form. But I still might get this because it would look so nice on the shelf next to THOR - WAR OF THE PANTHEONS. Ah, what the heck, I will probably also buy the EXCALIBUR collection just so I don´t have to unpack my precious floppies.
Once again it is time to wrap things up for Today and while I didn´t even get started on the long road that led me to THORSDAY WITH ERIK LARSEN I did manage to write about Thor so this does qualify as a THORSDAY post.
Since Tomorrow is a holiday AND somebody in my family celebrates her birthday I don´t know if I can do a FLASH FRIDAY post so the next post - which will be post number 799 - might be the Linda Kozlowski re - post.
Before we come to the usual array of celebrity birthdays and videos I want to add a little something for the followers of the DEJA VUE section. While the cover of BATMAN & THE OUTSIDERS 10 is just one of the many covers where two groups face off against each other it is difficult to pinpoint the exact cover to which it pays homage - if indeed it does - but the cover for SILVER SURFER 5 by Mike Allred is a tribute to MARVEL TWO - IN - ONE 96.
thor you are you little rascal
birthdays
Patricia Kaas 51 not only a talented musician herself but she also discovered french rumpshaker Alizée and was her mentor
Massimo Caputi 56 whose name is totally familiar to all who have watched Quelli Che Il Calcio or L´ Isola Dei Famosi both starring italian mega MILF Simona Ventura now that I have made a separate post for Monique Sluyter and the Tutti Frutti girls I might do a shortened version of her post - since the amount of GIFs is murder on the page uploading time - and maybe add a few new GIFs
Little Richard 85
Johannes Heesters 2011 with 108 years he was what Harald Juhnke always tried to be but never achieved a talented singer and dancer and a ladies man the only thing where Harald surpassed him was the drinking but with all things in his life he didn´t manage to do it in moderation and turned into a drunkard worse than Tony Stark
Steve Wasserman 1998 one of the producers of Beverly Hills 90210 which starred Tiffani Amber Thiessen who celebrates her 43rd birthday at the 23th of this month and since I have already done her repost
Russ Manning 1981
Fritz Lang 1976
Walt Disney 1966
videos
banner