After hours of rewriting my latest post, cutting some material, adding new GIFs, shortening it then making it longer again I have decided it´s time to let it go. If it has too much hot babes then that´s how it is but there are more posts that are waiting in the wings to be done. One such post is the one I prepared for Kurt Busiek´s 58th birthday on September the 16th.
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As longtime readers know I´m a huge fan of George Perez´art so it won´t surprise any of them that among all the great comic series Kurt Busiek has worked on over the decades I picked this title for a special spotlight post.
Especially since I have collected a lot of gorgeous - no pun intended - original art pages which I haven´t had the time or place to post yet.
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Which is what this post was initially going to be - just the best original art of George Perez´ second run on AVENGERS - but as usual things didn´t go as planned. Because while doing the research to find the according color pages for the original art I had selected it dawned on me that this post should not be primary about the art since it is a post about Kurt Busiek and therefore his writing should be involved in a more prominent way.
So while there are still some amazing original art pages in this post most of it are pages from the comics where you can enjoy Kurt Busiek´s writing.
For this post I have selected pages from two issues of AVENGERS and both feature the Scarlet Witch at the forefront. As much as somebody can be on the forefront in a title with more than 40 cast members. But Wanda Maximoff is a very interesting character if she is written the right way, something Marvel seems unable to do anymore. It´s one of the things that got me off Marvel as they come up with one stupid idea after another. It was bad enough that Bendis used her as his eternal deus ex machina while clearly not having much knowledge of her past history. Or the history of any of the Marvel characters when you think about it. Not only did he gravely misuse the Scarlet Witch in AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and ever since he also had Doctor Strange proclaim that there is no such thing as Chaos Magic AFTER a storyline in which Stephen Strange could no longer call on the usual magic beings for help - Agamotto, Vishanti, Hoggoth, etc. - and had to go in search of a new kind of magic to protect the earth from evil.
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That new kind of magic he eventually found ? That´s right . Chaos Magic.
![]()
What he later said did not exist. I don´t know how that particular story ended but even if he was not actually using Chaos Magic during AVENGERS ASSENBLE he should at least know it exists and not proclaim nonsense.
![]()
Anyway, back to GOOD writing one of the things that made Kurt Busiek´s stint on AVENGERS so enjoyable is that rather than re - imagening the team he just remembered them. There is so much Avengers lore that you don´t have to come up with a radical new twist, you can tell stories with them as they are. Because one of the things that makes this team so interesting are the ties between the members which go back for decades.
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In the case of the Scarlet Witch it are her ties with her husband Vision, with Wonder Man Simon Williams whose brain engrams were used to build the Vision ( or not depending on the retcon of the week ) and Simon´s brother the Grim Reaper, with Quciksilver and with Magneto. Who is her father no matter what anybody at Marvel may tell you. I mean, they even changed his name from Erik Magnus Lensherr to Max Eisenhardt - a terrible name especially the german readers - which makes absolutely no sense.
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Coming back to Kurt Busiek´s AVENGERS the first part of this is from issue 3, the culmination of the team´s battle against Morgan Le Fay where the Scarlet Witch shows her will strength. Whoever thinks that she is a boring team member clearly has no understanding of the team´s rich history. And George Perez obviously was having a ball drawing all the Avengers in armor.
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I included the last page of issue 3 on purpose because our second issue in this post is number 14, one of the funniest in the run. But how could it be any different when everybody´s favorite blue - furred X - Men guest stars.
Some people forget that Hank McCoy started out as part of Marvel´s merry mutants and he is one of the few super heroes in the Marvel universe who has successfully pulled off double duty on two teams without bad blood. In the issue Hank invites Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch to a night on the town after Simon Williams has come back from the dead for good ( in issue 3 it seemed like he was gone again but check out issues 10 and 11 to see how he came back ). Vision says he has other plans but joins them later anyway. What makes the issue great is that not only do they have a chat about old times but there is also a lot of action. Which could be the ends to a means in itself but writer Kurt Busiek aptly uses it to flesh out the characters. Captain America joins the battle in the middle of the fight but in this case his take charge attitude botches everything up which will lead to Wanda taking up the mantle of leadership further down the line.
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assemble
links
birthdays
missed birthdays
October the 1st Richard Corben and I wrote a post for him in 2016 and
about whom I have written in various posts over the years, starting in March of 2009 when I pimped the Haunt of Horror hardcover that was at a bargain price at amazon. I also did a special post about Hellboy in Mexico with a lot of stuff about lucha libre - the mexican version of wrestling - and another Hellboy comic by Richard Corben, The Crooked Man was part of a post with some reading tips for Halloween . His version of The Raven was part of a double feature on Edgar Allen Poe´s anniversary together with The Black Cat by the great late Bernie Wrightson and in 2016 I did one of my usual posts with lots of original art from series like Cage to Hellblazer.
We are staying with hot women who started out as models but we are making the jump from Germany to Spain where Mar Saura celebrated her 43rd birthday. In her case wikipedia needs to be updated because while it mentions her appearace in Los Mysterios De Laura it doesn´t acknowledge that she played a big role in season two of El Ministerio Del Tiempo one of Spain´s most successful series which I have mentioned a few times before. Since I try to pimp the series as much as I can I was looking for an episode with her or some good scenes but there are mostly interviews so I´m leaving you with Mar Saura´s biggest impact on spanish tv history : her sexy wardrobe malfunction on the show Verano Noche ( Summer Night ).
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Speaking about great moments in tv history brings us to Sonia Monroy who turned 46. She became famous as a member of the aptly named all busty pop group Las Sex Bombs whose debut album sold 50,000 copies in Spain and went gold. She also was on the spanish version of Survivor and her best appearance was on a talk show where she wore a dress with the mother of all cleavages even rivaling Kylie Minogue´s plunging mega cleavage in I Just Can´t Get You Out Of My Head and it´s a miracle she didn´t have a wardrobe malfunction although the dress didn´t leave anything to the imagination where her 38D airbags are concerned either.
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Back when I spent my summer vacations in Spain I always tried to tape as much of spanish tv as I could because it had to help me survive german tv for the rest of the year. So one year I was very tired when I finally arrived home and decided to leave setting up the vcr for the next day and Sonia Monroy´s appearance was the first thing I saw on spanish tv. I set up the vcr the next day but of course the show was not repeated and it took me a few years to find even some small clip on the internet. From then on setting up the vcr was always one of the first things I did when I came back home. Anyway, I coudn´t find any clip from this on YouTube which may be for the best because I don´t want to have too many videos of the same kind in one post. I uploaded one of the videos I found on my old blog and if there is enough reader interest I will do the same here. Otherwise it takes too long and I want to keep the uploads for the important things.
Apropos my summer vacations in Spain, that´s also when I got to see the uncensored version of late night movies of bad reputation and bad taste like Dr. Alien, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookersor Evil Toons with Michelle Bauer who celebrated her 60th birthday. I just mentioned her a few posts ago
Speaking about cult sirens, Tara Buckman turned 62 who is best known for her role as one of the Lamborghini Babes in the Cannonball Run movie.
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October the 2nd Frank Miller
cult sirens of notice
todays birthdays
Pamela Hensley 68 Princess Ardala on Buck Rogers
![]()
picture 1
![]()
picture 2
video
videos
banner
As longtime readers know I´m a huge fan of George Perez´art so it won´t surprise any of them that among all the great comic series Kurt Busiek has worked on over the decades I picked this title for a special spotlight post.
Especially since I have collected a lot of gorgeous - no pun intended - original art pages which I haven´t had the time or place to post yet.
Which is what this post was initially going to be - just the best original art of George Perez´ second run on AVENGERS - but as usual things didn´t go as planned. Because while doing the research to find the according color pages for the original art I had selected it dawned on me that this post should not be primary about the art since it is a post about Kurt Busiek and therefore his writing should be involved in a more prominent way.
So while there are still some amazing original art pages in this post most of it are pages from the comics where you can enjoy Kurt Busiek´s writing.
For this post I have selected pages from two issues of AVENGERS and both feature the Scarlet Witch at the forefront. As much as somebody can be on the forefront in a title with more than 40 cast members. But Wanda Maximoff is a very interesting character if she is written the right way, something Marvel seems unable to do anymore. It´s one of the things that got me off Marvel as they come up with one stupid idea after another. It was bad enough that Bendis used her as his eternal deus ex machina while clearly not having much knowledge of her past history. Or the history of any of the Marvel characters when you think about it. Not only did he gravely misuse the Scarlet Witch in AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and ever since he also had Doctor Strange proclaim that there is no such thing as Chaos Magic AFTER a storyline in which Stephen Strange could no longer call on the usual magic beings for help - Agamotto, Vishanti, Hoggoth, etc. - and had to go in search of a new kind of magic to protect the earth from evil.
That new kind of magic he eventually found ? That´s right . Chaos Magic.
What he later said did not exist. I don´t know how that particular story ended but even if he was not actually using Chaos Magic during AVENGERS ASSENBLE he should at least know it exists and not proclaim nonsense.
Anyway, back to GOOD writing one of the things that made Kurt Busiek´s stint on AVENGERS so enjoyable is that rather than re - imagening the team he just remembered them. There is so much Avengers lore that you don´t have to come up with a radical new twist, you can tell stories with them as they are. Because one of the things that makes this team so interesting are the ties between the members which go back for decades.
In the case of the Scarlet Witch it are her ties with her husband Vision, with Wonder Man Simon Williams whose brain engrams were used to build the Vision ( or not depending on the retcon of the week ) and Simon´s brother the Grim Reaper, with Quciksilver and with Magneto. Who is her father no matter what anybody at Marvel may tell you. I mean, they even changed his name from Erik Magnus Lensherr to Max Eisenhardt - a terrible name especially the german readers - which makes absolutely no sense.
Coming back to Kurt Busiek´s AVENGERS the first part of this is from issue 3, the culmination of the team´s battle against Morgan Le Fay where the Scarlet Witch shows her will strength. Whoever thinks that she is a boring team member clearly has no understanding of the team´s rich history. And George Perez obviously was having a ball drawing all the Avengers in armor.
I included the last page of issue 3 on purpose because our second issue in this post is number 14, one of the funniest in the run. But how could it be any different when everybody´s favorite blue - furred X - Men guest stars.
Some people forget that Hank McCoy started out as part of Marvel´s merry mutants and he is one of the few super heroes in the Marvel universe who has successfully pulled off double duty on two teams without bad blood. In the issue Hank invites Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch to a night on the town after Simon Williams has come back from the dead for good ( in issue 3 it seemed like he was gone again but check out issues 10 and 11 to see how he came back ). Vision says he has other plans but joins them later anyway. What makes the issue great is that not only do they have a chat about old times but there is also a lot of action. Which could be the ends to a means in itself but writer Kurt Busiek aptly uses it to flesh out the characters. Captain America joins the battle in the middle of the fight but in this case his take charge attitude botches everything up which will lead to Wanda taking up the mantle of leadership further down the line.
assemble
links
birthdays
missed birthdays
October the 1st Richard Corben and I wrote a post for him in 2016 and
about whom I have written in various posts over the years, starting in March of 2009 when I pimped the Haunt of Horror hardcover that was at a bargain price at amazon. I also did a special post about Hellboy in Mexico with a lot of stuff about lucha libre - the mexican version of wrestling - and another Hellboy comic by Richard Corben, The Crooked Man was part of a post with some reading tips for Halloween . His version of The Raven was part of a double feature on Edgar Allen Poe´s anniversary together with The Black Cat by the great late Bernie Wrightson and in 2016 I did one of my usual posts with lots of original art from series like Cage to Hellblazer.
We are staying with hot women who started out as models but we are making the jump from Germany to Spain where Mar Saura celebrated her 43rd birthday. In her case wikipedia needs to be updated because while it mentions her appearace in Los Mysterios De Laura it doesn´t acknowledge that she played a big role in season two of El Ministerio Del Tiempo one of Spain´s most successful series which I have mentioned a few times before. Since I try to pimp the series as much as I can I was looking for an episode with her or some good scenes but there are mostly interviews so I´m leaving you with Mar Saura´s biggest impact on spanish tv history : her sexy wardrobe malfunction on the show Verano Noche ( Summer Night ).
Speaking about great moments in tv history brings us to Sonia Monroy who turned 46. She became famous as a member of the aptly named all busty pop group Las Sex Bombs whose debut album sold 50,000 copies in Spain and went gold. She also was on the spanish version of Survivor and her best appearance was on a talk show where she wore a dress with the mother of all cleavages even rivaling Kylie Minogue´s plunging mega cleavage in I Just Can´t Get You Out Of My Head and it´s a miracle she didn´t have a wardrobe malfunction although the dress didn´t leave anything to the imagination where her 38D airbags are concerned either.
Back when I spent my summer vacations in Spain I always tried to tape as much of spanish tv as I could because it had to help me survive german tv for the rest of the year. So one year I was very tired when I finally arrived home and decided to leave setting up the vcr for the next day and Sonia Monroy´s appearance was the first thing I saw on spanish tv. I set up the vcr the next day but of course the show was not repeated and it took me a few years to find even some small clip on the internet. From then on setting up the vcr was always one of the first things I did when I came back home. Anyway, I coudn´t find any clip from this on YouTube which may be for the best because I don´t want to have too many videos of the same kind in one post. I uploaded one of the videos I found on my old blog and if there is enough reader interest I will do the same here. Otherwise it takes too long and I want to keep the uploads for the important things.
Apropos my summer vacations in Spain, that´s also when I got to see the uncensored version of late night movies of bad reputation and bad taste like Dr. Alien, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookersor Evil Toons with Michelle Bauer who celebrated her 60th birthday. I just mentioned her a few posts ago
Speaking about cult sirens, Tara Buckman turned 62 who is best known for her role as one of the Lamborghini Babes in the Cannonball Run movie.
October the 2nd Frank Miller
cult sirens of notice
todays birthdays
Pamela Hensley 68 Princess Ardala on Buck Rogers
picture 1
picture 2
video
videos
banner