Also it´s about time to put something new on the blog even if it means that my second post about my visit to the ComicCon Stuttgart 2017 will remain unfinished a little bit longer. It seems I will have no other option that to wrap that up with all the other celebrities that were attending and maybe the rest of my general impressions before going into further detail. I don´t know why but I just can´t continue with the post so I think it´s better to cut off what I have already written even if it means that I will come to the most important part - the comics I bought - in part three.
But as it is the course I´m currently taking for the jobcenter is eating up all of my free time and I should not even be doing this post but rather get some sleep so I´m not late again Tomorrow. But like I said, John Romita Jr is one of my favortie artists and if my laptop hadn´t had to update again I could probably put at least all of the main part of this post on the blog but since that took almost an hour I don´t know how far we will come Today.
Anyway, since last year´s birthday post was all about the Epic Collection Daredevil - A Touch Of Typhoid ( and Patty´s World by Purita Campos ) this year I am posting a team - up between everybody´s favorite webslinger and one of my favorite Avengers, Monica Rambeau a.k.a. Captain Marvel ( I know she used a lot of other code names after that but I´m not going to list them all and to me she will always be Captain Marvel ). She had her debut in AMAZING SPIDER - MAN ANNUAL 16 and appeared in AVENGERS 227 where she became a member of Earth´s supreme fighting force.
Now one of the reasons why I picked AMAZING SPIDER - MAN ANNUAL 16 for Today´s post is that I am still reading the SPIDER - MAN BY ROGER STERN OMNIBUS hardcover and longtime readers of the blog know that it is a rare occassion when I post about a comic book I´m currently reading.
I got the omnibus when it was in the new and used books section of amazon at half price and while it was not as cheap as I thought it would be ( since it got held up in customs and I had to go to the Customs Office in Ludwigsburg which was so exhausting that I was out cold for two days. Additionally the packaging was so sub standard so it arrived in really bad shape ) I could not have been able to afford it at the full price. Now and then I´m a bit miffed that it has a few bumps and bruises here and there but I am glad to have it in my comic collection and can wholeheartedly recommend it to any Spider - Man fan. This is one of Spidey´s best periods and no matter if you want to re - read Roger Stern´s great stories that are so fondly remembered ( like The Kid Who Collected Spider - Man ) as they restored the amazing arachnid to his former glory or experience them as a newcomer to the Spider - Man lore or yes, even if you only want to see John Romita Jr´s progress an an artist this is a book worth your money.
Yes, these omnibus books are really heavy and if you can´t read them on a table you get a lot of workout but here you get your money´s worth with over 1,200 pages. One of the things that bugged me with the THE HANDS OF SHANG - CHI, MASTER OF KUNG FU omnibus 3 is that while it has a regular price of 125 bucks it´s only 700 pages. 700 glorious pages of Mike Zeck art - with a bit of Gene Day art thrown in - but still only 700 pages.
So for me it is overpriced and even if you can get it for 80 bucks that´s too expensive. If it´s 700 pages it should cost no more than 70 bucks.
Okay, I still bought it but only for my 50th birthday and because I had some extra money from a lottery ticket. And in all fairness, I´m always bitching about how big and heavy and expensive those omnibus books are but then I go on pimping them and telling people to buy them. Which would be weird if I did not do posts on a regular basis where I tell people when they can buy them at a bargain price. And it´s not like I´m recommending books I don´t buy myself since I already have 16 of these omnibus books.
Back to the topic of Today´s post, I have a tendency to write about the same series again and again so I wanted to pick something I had not covered in a while and since I already wrote about John Romita Jr´s DAREDEVIL issues last year and his UNCANNY X - MEN issues in May I thought it would be nice to return to his AMAZING SPIDER - MAN issues.
I thought I had already done the first post about the Hobgoblin but as always I had only planned to do that so we start with one of the best issues in the omnibus that - as you already should expect from me - has a little something something as you get two Romitas for the price of one as John Romita Sr. inked the annual. You will find a few issues of the regular series inked by him in the omnibus. Usually I post the color pages right next to the pages of original art in these posts but I didn´t want to make this post too long and prefer to have more pages in sequence. Also these are the only pages I could find from this so the point is moot in any way.
The original art pages were found at the usual suspects like COMIC ART FANS while most of the color pages are from MY MARVEL LIFE 1980 which has a long post on the annual. You can find a shorter one on BIFF BAM POP.
Thankfully our acknowledgement and link section for this post is rather short because our birthday list is rather long thanks to my low posting ratio. As usual we start with the birthdays I missed since my last - and still unfinished - post for those who want to go back and check them out and maybe it´s poetic justice that I could not do a post about Kelley Jones since he got two posts last year : one about his DC art and one about his work at other companies . I prepared the material for another all Batman post so it would have been a piece of cake to do if I only had the time.
It´s also not that crucial that I did not get to do a post for Lynda Carter´s birthday because I have updated her original post a few times over the years. In fact I just did a new version of the post with bigger and better animated GIFs last year and I´m not sure if there´s much to add to it.
Lynda is still the best on screen version of the amazon princess ( I haven´t seen the new Wonder Woman movie yet but despite Gal Gadot being the best part of the train wreck that was Superman versus Batman : Dawn of Justice I don´t think she can bring across the role with as much grace and warmth as Lynda ) and she has shown in the last season of Supergirl - where she plays the president of the United States no less - that she apparently ages at a lesser rate than us mere mortals. But do not fear, there is still enough of Lynda Carter and Wonder Woman in this post.
Speaking of which, while our next candidate Ernie Chan never worked on the Wonder Woman comic book he did provide a few covers for the series and drew her in quite a few stories with Batman or the Justice League.
I did a post on him last year which includes links to some posts about his run with Sal Buscema on The Incredible Hulk one of my favorite periods on the title that still hasn´t come out in the Marvel Masterworks hardcovers.
The Ernie Chan tribute post is also where I had originally posted the part about 80s cult siren Monique Sluyter and the Tutti Frutti girls but that part got too long and I had to give it a post of its own which I re - posted last year in a new and better version . She was a candidate from my Justice League of America casting series - I cast her as Fire a.k.a. Beatriz da Costa in the Andy Sidaris Special - and before getting her solo post she was also regularly mentioned in the annual re - posts of italian mega soccer MILF Simona Ventura . I wanted to do a new version of her post since there was some new stuff that I wanted to add to it so I´ll have to wait and see if I can get around to do it before her birthday comes around next year.
Strangely enough another candidate from my Justice League movie casting series also had her birthday that day, none other than Maria Grazia Cucinotta who turned 49. I selected the italian sexbomb with the big 39D ( !!! ) bombs as Big Barda in the very first post of the Hollywood version .
In the original FOURTH WORLD comics by Jack Kirby - and this definitely changed in the NEW 52 - Big Barda was built like a brick shithouse with the personality of a ladytrucker, the muscles of a female bodybuilder, the measurements of a centerfold and the cupsize of a porn star. She got that from her mother Big Breeda, the fiercest female warriors on Apokolips who - nomen est omen - was therefore selected by Darkseid himself to breed the next race of warriors. I don´t know if that was because she spurned Darkseid´s advances or if he just thought she would produce the best offspring but it is implied that he used her like a blow up sex doll !
All for the next generation of Akopolips´ finest of course. Now with Big Barda the melons didn´t fall far from the tree and when she began to develop, especially in certain parts of her anatomy that had to do with procreation Darkseid decided to let her follow in her mother´s footsteps and - like mother like daughter - personally introduce Big Barda to the breeding pens to continue the family tradition. So as soon as she got wind of Darkseid´s perverted plans for her Big Barda decided to ditch Apokolips and hitched the next ride to Earth. According to Big Barda she managed to do that before Darkseid had a chance to break her but maybe she was so eager join Mister Miracle because she had already tasted the Darkseed.
For more on DC´s creepy sex stories with Big Barda - like the time when Superman starred in a porn mocvie with her and then claimed he could not remember a thing - check out BIG BARDA : DEATH, LIES AND VIDEOTAPES .
( and click here for more great art by Steve Rude " The Dude " )
Like I said, originally I casted Maria Grazia Cucinotta as Big Barda but keeping in mind her history I may cast her as Big Breeda. Not only to get Maria to do nude scenes that way but also because then I could cast italian 37C sexbomb Monica Bellucci as Big Barda and give the role of Wonder Woman to european 90s porn superstar Sarah Loiuse Young .
To finish the birthdays of July 27th I want to mention Julian McMahon who turned 45 and who started his career in Danii Minogue´s music video This Is It. He then tangled with the very visible woman Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four as Doctor Doom but his greatest claim to fame is that he got his pawns on sexbomb Alyssa Milano as The Source of all Evil on Charmed.
Alyssa was the main reason why guys watched the show, it was all to see her girating her hips as a sultry belly dancer or an almost naked mermaid.
Male viewers got their wish when Alyssa got her freak on in Embrace of the Vampire where she did her best performance going full frontal.
I did a re - post of Alyssa Milano´s cult siren entry on her birthday last December which you might want to check out ( I also did one post with Alyssa´s best Charmed outfits since I couldn´t fit it all into one post ).
It´s back to my Justice League of America movie casting since our next candidate is Elizabeth Berkeley, who had been part of my posts about Tiffany Amber Thiessen and Tori Spelling. I cast her as the Nympho Supergirl from Earth XXX in my second alternatives post for casting the Justice League movie and managed to give her a post of her own last year.
Who never was a part of my JLA casting is real live Power Girl Leslie Easterbrook who had the most famous scene in Police Academy 4 - Citizens on Patrol in which she emerges from a pool in a wet t - shirt .
She also has a spin - off post that is re - posted most years that used to be in one post together with Janet Jones Gretzky who starred alongside her in Police Academy 5 and Becky Mullen but I had to put it in three separate post because I upgraded it with a lot of animated GIFs. I also wanted to do a new version of Leslie´s post as well as Becky Mullen´s post from last year because there is some new material I already prepared in advance to add.
In any case it´s not tragic since they have been around the block a few times unlike pin up icon Betty Brosmer who only got one re - post so far.
It´s back to comic artists and the letter m as Bob McLeod , Rick Leonardi and Jim Lee have all worked on Marvel´s mutant titles while Paul Gulacy made his mark on The Hands of Shang - Chi, Master of Kung Fu. I´m not quite sure if I have a special folder for Bob McLeod or Jim Lee but I have one for the other two. I made one especially for Paul Gulacy to have them in one place but so far I don´t have enough material accumulated. On the other hand there is still enough stuff left to do a post on Rick Leonardi.
While this takes care of the celebrity / comic related birthdays I already covered last year or in previous posts there are still a few cult siren worth mentioning so let´s get back to the ones from July 23rd. We skipped cult tv bikini sexbomb Charisma Carpenter who turned 47 and is best known as Cordelia Chase on Buffy and the spin off Angel although Today´s kids may better know her from her recurring role on Veronica Mars which means they missed a lot of scorching bikini scenes with Charisma´s huge 34Ds.
One of these days I´ll have to get the first season of Veronica Mars to find out how it all started since I came in at the tailend of that season - as usual. Besides Veronica Mars Charisma Carpenter was also in episode 11 of season 5 of Burn Notice where she showed she still delivers the goods.
In Germany only the first three seasons of Burn Notice have come out on DVD and right now I´m halfway through season 2. I´m not sure if I should wait any longer to see if they will do the rest someday or just get them through imports. Now that I´m invested I want to know how it plays out and there is even a spin off with Bruce Campbell´s character Sam. In any case Charisma´s funbags alone are worth the price of admission . Daimn !
Woody Harrelson turned 56 and his greatest cineastic achievement was to rub his raging Woody ( sorry, I couldn´t resist the pun ) all over Bruce Willis´ then wife Demi Moore in An Indecent Proposal. Come on, with a title like that you knew there would be some sheninagans involved.
What´s more in White Men Can´t Jump Woody also got to work with the ultimate MILF Rosie Perez whose breasts get bigger and bigger each year.
But I´m not the only one who is fascinated by Rosie´s rapidly rising rotund rack as they were even immortalized in a song by Kanye West much to the chagrin of Rosie : " I'm a woman of a certain age, if you're gonna mention me in a song, have a little respect. He mentions my breasts. When you walk down the street and you have 15 - year - old boys ... they're like, ' Yo, Rosie, D's D's, Rosie Perez,' it's no good." I´m not sure what being a woman of a " certain age " has to do with it, because strangers singing about the size of your breasts would have you uncomfortable at any age.
Someone who surely has some thoughts along that line is Craig Ferguson who makes her come again and again ... as a guest on his show I mean.
Originally I wanted to post a video from The Tonight Show where she appeared with an r - rated cleavage but I haven´t found it yet on YouTube.
As promised we return to Wonder Woman and Lynda Carter related stuff on August the 5th, when buxom former 38E knockout Loni Anderson celebrated her 71st anniversary. That´s right, I´m saying former 38E because sadly she has reduced her breathtaking busticide to a 38C. The blonde bombshell was very popular with the boys at her school because she already had an incredible 37D bust at the tender age of 14. She worked her way through school by winning beauty pageants and when she was 18 she had to become a teacher to support herself and her baby.
Best known for being married to Burt Reynolds and playing the highly - paid, sexy, intelligent, and incredibly efficient receptionist Jennifer Marlowe on WKRP in Cincinnati which turned her into a sex symbol overnight Loni was hired for the part after a decade of unemployment because the producers saw a photo of her in a stunning red swimsuit.
The show suffered through the Nielsen ratings during its four year run but had a strong and loyal following among teenagers and young adults thanks to it´s main attraction. Later on Loni played Jane Mansfield, the role she was practically born for alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and appeared in the episode Of Guilt, Models And Murders on The Incredible Hulk tv show.
She also was on Love Boat wearing the red swimsuit for the audience.
The guys in Tinseltown thought that putting her and Lynda Carter in one show was a no brainer but even back then beauty and acting talent could not substitute good writing and so Partners In Crime was short lived.
Speaking of starring in a tv series opposite wonderful Lynda Carter, John Saxon who celebrated his 82nd birthday is best known as the guy with the inexhaustable reserve of suitcases in Enter The Dragon and the father in A Nightmare On Elm Street but like Loni Anderson he also was in a comic book tv series, but in his case from DC. I´m speaking of course about the Wonder Woman tv series where he played a Nazi. But it was not in any episode, no, it was in The Feminum Mystique, a two part epic not only featuring John Saxon as a Nazi general but also The Adams Family´s own Morticia Adams Carolyn Jones as Wonder Woman´s mom and an incredibly buxom Debra Winger as Wonder Woman´s sister Drusilla / Wonder Girl.
Who was the result of an editorial snafu. In some Impossible Tales Wonder Woman had adventures together with two younger versions of herself, as a toddler ( called Wonder Tot ) and as a girl ( Wonder Girl ) and one guy saw only the cover and thought Wonder Girl was Wonder Woman´s sister.
And so decades of confusing origin stories and contradicting retcons began. If you dare to try and unravel the mystery Eric Diaz on NERDIST goes over the whole thing in detail, Rob Bricken on the iO9 lists The 14 Ridiculously Bizarre Origins, Lives and Retcons of Wonder Girl and if you want to have a shorter version check out this post by COMICS ALLIANCE although they do skip the whole Wonder Girl just being teenage Wonder Woman thing. Anyway, all the confusion did give us the character of Donna Troy who was a very important part in Marv Wolfman and George Perez´ The New Teen Titans even if some of the later stories that messed with her origin trying to fit her into a continuity were confusing ( go to MARS WILL SEND NO MORE for 23 additional Teen Titans splash pages ).
And as I said, we got Debra Winger as Wonder Girl / Drusilla out of this.
Our last and final birthday in this post is also Justice League related as on August the 12th swimsuit model extraordinaire Linda O´Neil turned 43rd.
You may remember that I cast her as Zatanna in one of my Casting The Justice League of America Movie posts that also features 36DD bombshells Tylene Buck and hasian LeAnna Scott among other fitness / bikini models.
She has played small roles in sitcoms like Unhappily Ever After but if you really want to see her at her hottest you absolutely have to watch her Ironman Swimsuit Spectacular appearances - on DVDs four and five.
Since it´s almost impossible to find a good video with Linda O´Neil on YouTube and I´m pretty sure I already posted the Ironman Swimsuit Spectacular video with LeAnna Scott somewhere else here is a video with Tylene Buck. Man, with a name and a body like that it was only a matter of time before she ended up in adult movies. The following match is from her days in the WCW as Major Gunns when she became part of Team Canada.
There were a few of her matches on YouTube but longtime readers are probably not surprised that the reason I chose this one is hasian Leia Meow who also has a name - and the big oppai - for a porn super star.
Although I don´t think she ever did star in adult movies. But the best part of the video is not the match, it´s the catfight between Tylene Buck and Leia Meow where Leia shows that she is very skilled handling a whip.
Leia a.k.a. Kristina Laum was the manager of the Jung Dragons and she always got lots of attention for her hot outfits although she also has wrestling skills and could put a Frankensteiner on Jamie Noble if necessary.
Since we already have enough birthdays in this post ( and I had to cut the part with Jessica Nigri, hasian Yaya Han and Uschi Digard - not to mention Claudia Christian, Tera Patrick, Tawny Kitaen, Monique Gabrielle and Lisa Boyle ) I am skipping Today´s birthdays, I did most of the important ones last year anyway. Here is a video about Wonder Woman´s darkest period.
If you thought the NEW 52 version of Wonder Woman was bad ( I only read the Brian Azzarello stuff which I liked, but I have no idea if anything that came after it was worth reading ) or what´s in the current Rebirth comic book or the movie version you ain´t seen nothing yet. Suffering Sappho !
We had asian sex kitten Leia Meow and a catfight with Tylene Buck and since there was a petition to not post things about the terrorist attacks in Spain and post stuff with nice cats instead our cartoon video of the day also has to do with cats. I found Night on the Galactic Railroad by chance and I have no idea what it´s about but the animation looks amazing.
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Hera, give me strength !
