Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Valentine´s Day Special with Ben Grimm

As longtime blog readers know I don´t like to have two Marvel - centric posts in a row but to keep my Valentine´s Day tradition of the worst break ups in comic history going I am doing a special post that I initially wanted to post a few weeks ago. But thankfully I didn´t get to do my Jerry Ordway birthday follow up post as it fits Today´s topic perfectly.


To set the whole thing up, our first story takes place during the aftermath of the first SECRET WARS, when the Thing decided to stay on the planet that the Beyonder had created because he could change back to Ben Grimm there and She Hulk subbed for him on the Fantastic Four. Reed and Sue Richards were trying to live a more quiet family life with their son Franklin in the suburbs of Belle Porte and Reed was going incognito by altering his face with his powers so that he looked like Bill Tanner on ALF.


Anyway, no man can live in peace if it doesn´t suit the noisy neighbor and in the Richards´ case it was their next door neighbor Mrs. Chalmers who got Elspeth Cromwell, a self appointed exorcist and vanquishers of demons involved because she thought her neighbors were witches. Well, what sounds like an episode of Are You Afraid Of The Dark ? turned serious when bumbling wannabe devil hunter Elspeth Cromwell succeeded - but not in the way she wanted. After summoning a legion of undead warriors she managed to unleash Mephisto unto the world, which is where our issue picks up. And you thought your neighbors were a pain in the ass. 


Now before we come to the first part of this post there are two things I have to mention. The first one is that this happens before my first post on Jerry Ordway´s stint on the FANTASTIC FOUR by John Byrne but of course I did the other part first. And like in that post we have another pivotal point in the history of Marvel´s first family that had a big impact for a very long time even if it was kind of negated by later writers. But that´s comics for you. The other thing is that like many other issues of John Byrne´s FANTASTIC FOUR he experiments a bit with the tools of comic book storytelling by having two separate stories unfolding at the same time. You have the part with Ben Grimm finally returning home from the Beyonder´s planet in the top half and Reed and Sue Richards battle against Mephisto - with Doctor Strange as guest star - in the bottom half.


And you can either read them separately - first read the top half and then read the bottom half - or together - reading it in the normal way going page by page - which is a neat bonus John Byrne threw in for the readers.


And there still are people out there who ask why he was such a big force in the Bronze Age. Anyway, Ben Grimm receives the best homecoming in comics ever and we will get to another big moment in the team´s history.


As you might have guessed from the last page Franklin Richards ultimately defeated Mephisto ( although only for a time since he is a manifestation of the evil in all of us and therefore will exist as long as there is evil on earth ) but the important thing of this issue was the change in status quo between Alicia Masters and Ben Grimm. Today´s SJWs would probably say that she emancipated herself from being just the love interest and damsel in distress of the Thing or something but as I have mentioned in my last post about this era I began to read american issues around this time and it was a huge paradigm shift. Because this situation was unheard of. In any case, despite the fact that the Thing initially went to Alicia to break up with her I still felt bad for him because of the way it happened. And Johnny Storm really violated the bro code here because no matter which way you cut it you do NOT start something with another guy´s woman especially not while he´s on another planet. After his break up with Cristal ( which we already covered two years ago ) he really should have known better. But as I already said - and this is not a spoiler at this point - that whole storyline was thrown out of the window when it was revealed that the Alicia Masters the Human Torch had married was not who we thought.


Now I still haven´t started my new FANTASTIC FOUR FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN series because there are at least two posts before I can wrap up FLASH FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN - which went on hiatus in the middle of a three part crossover with GREEN ARROW and GREEN LANTERN so I want to finish that before starting something new - but I liked this turn of events.

Not so much for the story itself but for the surprising reveal at the end of the issue and the fallout from it which was an interesting and multilayered character with Lyja whom really longtime readers may remember as the surprising winner of my COMIC BABE BATTLE post on the Fantastic Four.


And I´m saying surprising winner because initially I thought that Sue Storm would be a shoo in for first place - she even got Prince Namor all hot and bothered for her impressive set of lungs - but looking at it objectively a woman who can take on the shape of any woman there is and more than that any woman you can imagine is hard to beat. Which is why in the end she got her own solo post which may have gotten a bit out of hand, sorry.


By the way, lately I´m thinking about bringing back COMIC BABE BATTLE provided there is enough reader interest and I can find the time. Those were after all my most popular posts and even if I can´t do new posts at the moment I would like to do new versions of the old ones. And who knows ? I might even rank some of them differently now. So if you have an opinion on the subject matter please let me know in the comments below.


Returning to the subject of THIS post there is another important storyline from Jerry Ordway´s tenure on FANTASTIC FOUR and this involves Doctor Victor Von Doom, arguably the best villain in the entire Marvel universe who had a huge impact not only inside the world of comics but also in pop culture in general as he influenced a lot of other things among them the look of Darth Vader. Anyway, John Byrne changed some of his back story.  


Which is not the main reason why we are re - visiting this story. Further than simply tweaking Victor Von Doom´s origin story ( and it´s Victor VON Doom, not VAN Doom or VAN Damme or any of that crap because he´s really from Germany for any out there who don´t know what Latveria really stands for ) which alone would be reason enough for Today´s decompressed writers to start a six issue mini series John Byrne also laid seeds that had repercussions for decades to come and it all started with Doctor Doom kidnapping - or is that building napping ? - by shooting the Baxter Buidling into space. While the entire FF team is in it of course.


By the way, for those of you wondering why Mr. Fantastic is wearing a cast his left arm was broken by a one of the demons Elspeth Cromwell conjured in issue 276 and it has not fully healed yet. Nice use of continuity by Mr. Byrne here. I know that with Today´s comic readers it is out of vogue to include anything that requires an attention span of more than 10 minutes but it was little things like this that set Marvel apart from other companies like DC where you always had the same status quo at the beginning and the end of an issue and really put Marvel on the map in such a short time.

You can hear writers drone on endlessly nowadays about how stifling continuity is and how it ultimately kills the momentum of every story but a good writer always uses the continuity for him. Since I mentioned it in this post already one of my favorite periods of the Fantastic Four is the run by Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan and one of the many reasons why it is so fantastic is not that it shuns continuity but rather embraces it. The entire story - and it really is one long continuous story from beginning to end - is deeply steeped in the history and the continuity of the characters which enrichens everything and makes you care all the more for the characters.


Speaking of characters, one of the most important characters from that run was introduced in the story we are talking about because after surviving Doctor Doom´s machinations and quickly making their way to Latveria the Fantastic Four discover that it was not really Doom himself but rather a little boy by the name of Kristoff Vernard, an orphan Victor Von Doom adopted and brainwashed into believing to be the true Doom.

But like all the plans of mice and men Doctor Doom´s scheme went awry because his manipulation of Kristoff´s mind was too good and Kristoff Vernard ultimately became so convinced that he was really Doctor Doom that even a confrontation with the real Doctor Doom could not faze him.


Which did lead to countless battles between Kristoff and the " impostor " much to the chagrin of old Braceface. I think that Walter Simonson found a way to finally resolve this whole thing and return the original Doctor Doom to the role of only Doom there is in his stories. During the Fantastic Four run by Tom DeFalco and Paul Ryan Kristoff becomes a full fledged member of the team for a time and he knows that he is not the real Doctor Doom.


And speaking of continuity, for those keeping tabs the first meeting of Kristoff and Cassie Lang took place in FANTASTIC FOUR 403 and laid the groundwork for their later relationship / romance in A NEXT, FANTASTIC FIVE and all the other series in the MC2 universe of which I always was a big fan. Those were the only books that still had the old Marvel feeling of adventure and wonder when nobody at Marvel was doing Marvel books.    


Much as it is Today which just shows you that it´s true what they say : the more things change the more they stay the same. And that´s as good a final word on Today´s post as any so let´s get to the usual links which is - no big surprise here - a list of Doctor Doom´s greatest hits. We start off with Thomas Katers on iFANBOY who takes a look at Fantastic Four 87 a perfect encapsulation of what makes Doctor Doom such a great character while BRONZE AGE BABIES has A Tale Of Two Doctors. Which has nothing to do with Dr. Who but instead is a two part story in which Doctor Donald Blake - and subsequently his alter ego Thor - goes up against Doctor Doom.

Now no list of Doctor Doom´s greatest hits would be complete without This Land Is Mine and for all that are new to the Marvel universe THE PEERLESS POWER OF COMICS presents the prologue to that story from Fantastic Four Annual 15 drawn by the great Tom Sutton as well as the John Byrne story, there´s also a post about that issue on NOT A HOAX ! NOT A DREAM ! and you can find more pages from Fantastic Four 247 on MARS WILL SEND NO MORE . RANDOM HAPPENSTANCE presents Two Dooms To Destroy Me from The Mighty Thor 410 written by Tom DeFalco - again - and drawn by Ron Frenz while MAC MACENTIRE sheds a light on The Great Doombot Controversy which is a complicated subject since Doombots are a very convenient way for writers to erase anything they do not like.

Since there have been no comic related birthdays or cult sirens of notice since my last post that I covered previously we go directly to Today´s celebrity birthdays which start with an anniversary for my german readers as Andrea Lamar turns 50 - or 48 depending on which website you consult.


To Today´s television audience her name doesn´t mean much but for people of my generation who remember the time before tm3 became 9Live she brightened many days as one of the hosts of the call in show La Notte. As a testimony of that it was extremely difficult to find pictures of her. Andrea is still on tv but back in the day she was often hotter than the women who undressed on La Notte and we were waiting with bated breath to see her lean forward and reveal more of her spectacular breasts.


Of course with such a lot of sex appeal it was only a matter of time before Andrea Lamar tried her hand at acting and thanks to her perfect physique she even looked right at home on her guest stint on Die Rote Meile.

The series was named after the red light district of St. Pauli in Hamburg and was a sequel to The King of St. Pauli. It follows the lives of strippers, prostitutes and their pimps but they are all portrayed like regular people not like in american tv series where people from this walk of life are always portrayed as bad people. I remember an episode of a series about beach cops on bikes ( that sounds as action packed as it was ) with people from the porn industry and they also made them killers because all people in adult entertainment are horrible people. Anyway, I watched every episode of Die Rote Meile because they had a very easy concept : one strip in every episode which was not interrupted by commercials. I don´t know if they could do that Today as they put commercials into everything.

Even if they did not go totally topless - sometimes they had pasties on - I was glued to the tv watching such ultimate sexbombs like Yasmina Filali.


Daimn, that girl really has the prototype of the heart shaped ass. Now longtime readers know that one of my pet peeves is giving credit to the unsung actresses who upgrade movies and tv shows by getting naked on camera and there were sure some among them on Die Rote Meile as I found out when I tried to find the names of my favorite strippers. Yes, only the " real " actors are mentioned in the cast meaning those with a speaking part which tells you which place some women still occupy in Today´s society. So if anybody out there knows the name of the living blow up sex doll with the huge melons below put it in the comments.


Anyway, one of the best strippers of the regular cast is Sylvia Leifheit who has a secret identity in the series as she plays the typical devoted wife by day, secret stripper by night. Sylvia made me realize two things : firstly, while I usually don´t go for skinny chicks she is just oozing so much sex appeal that I would do her in a minute. And second, hair color can really make a difference because her character in the series is actually a blonde and despite having the same figure as a blonde she´s kind of a - meh - looking girl while as Luna with the black wig she´s a real firecracker !


A few years back I got the complete first season of Die Rote Meile on DVD at amazon at a pretty decent price and I´m glad I seized the opportunity because it really goes for ridiculous prices now. I can really recommend this show and Sylvia Leifheit alone is worth the price of admission.


Now coming back to Andrea Lamar. she is one of the women where I think I already posted something about her only to find out that I didn´t. I also thought I had some material about her such as pictures, animated GIFs or videos but either I never had or I accidentally deleted it. So I had to go to YouTube and this is the only vid in good quality with Andrea Lamar I found.



As I said Andrea Lamar still appears on these sales show and another major MILF sexbomb of german tv who also appears on those shopping channels is Busenwunder Daniela " Dreifach Dee " Elger. who has quite arguably the biggest boobs on german tv. And I´m saying " arguably " the biggest boobs on german tv because neither her exact measurements nor those of hot Tatjana " Tittensau " Ohm are publicly known. So until they both compete in a wet t - shirt contest it´s impossible to say who has the bigger chest.



In any case, sadly unlike Andrea Lamar Daniela Elger never appeared on Die Rote Meile even though it would have been child´s play for Daniela to believably portray a stripper or even one of the prostitutes. I mean, her body is made for porn and any man would pay a lot of money to have sex with this living blow up sex doll. As it is we only have her appearances on call in shows, where she either doesn´t wear outfits that feature her best parts or if she does she is most often than not covered up by some stuff.



Thankfully there are still the shopping channels where you can see more of her and the camera men use any excuse to zoom in on her giant melons.



It was hard to narrow it down to four videos ( which is the reason why you can find more videos of Daniela Elger through the links ) and here Daniela wears the perfect dress which displays her impressive rack in such a way that would have qualified her for a starring role in any Russ Meyer movie.



It´s back to comics with Roger Langridge who celebrates his 51st birthday.

There are no new comic books of Roger I can pimp this year but I just found a truckload of funny Doctor Who cartoons by him. Since this is probably old news to anyone but me I haven´t made a post about it yet but you never know, it might pop up on the blog when you least expect it.


What probably everyone expected is a new Yaya Han video since this is the big Valentine´s Day post. I had to put a lot of bikini videos and hot r & b videos in a spin - off post because this post was just getting out of hand ( I still didn´t want to completely delete it from the blog because I want to keep it somewhat real ) but I got to keep the Yaya Han video here.


Now I didn´t really expect to be able to post a new video with Yaya Han but lo and behold I stumbled upon this one from the Comic Con in Brussels. Which made me realize that I almost missed another chance to meet Yaya Han but I´m saying almost because I probably would not have gone anyway - even if I did have the money or the time. I just hope I am fit enough to meet her this year at the Comic con in Stuttgart and I have to come up with a costume even if I only go as Fred Flintstone. Because Yaya´s cosplaying here is impeccable as always. God, that costume, that cleavage and even more, what´s inside the cleavage. Yaya is the best !



Since I could not find a good video with Roger Langridge here is one with mi paisano José Gonzales who - among other books - worked on Warren´s Vampirella. Each time I see one of those I´m so glad that I managed to get a few volumes of Dark Horse´s reprints of Creepy and Eerie at real bargain prices at amazon. And I hope a few of my readers also grabbed the chance because I pimped them on the blog any chance I got and even if you get them at just a slight discount price the hardcovers are really worth it.



I´m finally putting a bow on this post ( at least on this part of it since I still have to finish the spin - off ) with a video I already posted at least two times. I hope the third time is really the charm. While this version is very different from Norrin Radd´s story in the comics I like the art that homages Jack Kirby to a great extent. And if you think the end is missing : that´s right. For some reason they canceled the show before the last episode. Something that happened with Kirby in the comics a few times.



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


Say it, Richards ! Doctor Doom is your master !

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