Sunday, May 19, 2019

Schwarz Weiß Sonntag mit Marv Wolfman

As always I am late - Marv Wolfman´s 73rd birthday was on Monday - but going over the list of comicbook related birthdays since my last post this is the one that got me most excited. And I probably don´t need to explain why that is to anybody who has been following my blog for some time.


For those who are new to the blog : Marv Wolfman has written a plethora of comicbook series including two I consider to be two of the best ever produced, TOMB OF DRACULA with Gene Colan and THE NEW TEEN TITANS with George Perez. Add to that the fact that I am also a huge fan of Gene Colan and George Perez and you can probably guess why I just had to seize the opportunity to put more TITANS pages on the blog ( I know that the series also went by the names of TALES OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS and NEW TITANS but for the sake of expediency I´m going to stick to TITANS ).


You are probably asking yourself if TOMB OF DRACULA is such a great series why don´t I feature both ? There are various reasons. First up I try to avoid doing these double feature posts and prefer to concentrate on just one series. Secondly, we have had a lot of Marvel Comics content in out last posts and as longtime readers know I like to switch things up to keep it interesting - for my readers but also for myself - so we are going with DC Comics for this post. The third reason is that I think TITANS is just a bit more " trending " as they say right now due to its adaptions as the TITANS tv series - which is very different than the comicbooks - and season 3 of YOUNG JUSTICE. Which is basically the best parts of the TITANS comics.

Although they are doing their own spin on it. The first part of the season did a new interpretation of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS with the Young Justice team taking the place of the Outsiders and now that they have their own version of Victor Stone a.k.a. Cyborg ( for some reason every DC franchise has to do their own version of Cyborg and he´s in every team now from the Justice League to the Doom Patrol - about which we will be talking later ) and Tara Markov as a possible new team member they are all set up for their version of THE JUDAS CONTRACT. I just hope it will be better than the version of the awful TEEN TITANS cartoon show.


With so many posts that I have done in my 14 years of blogging about not only TITANS but also Marv Wolfman, TOMB OF DRACULA and especially George Perez it would take too long to put up all the links but I am going to include some related to the TITANS. We start with my first spotlight post on THE NEW TEEN TITANS by Marv Wolfman and George Perez or as I got to first know the series JUNGE GIGANTEN. The post is not only about how I first discovered the series but also explains what Baxter paper is and why it was so difficult to collect the series before the reprinting in the omnibus hardcovers and trade paperbacks that we have now begun.


The next post I want to include is not about the TITANS per se but it deals with the evolution of Dick Grayson from Batman´s sidekick Robin to the leader of the Titans and ultimately his own hero persona as Nightwing.


I also did a post about the miscoloring of the TITANS covers by spanish publisher ZINCO that includes some animated GIFs I made my self to help my readers to put the issues from the various series in the right order and they even popped up in an entry in my CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA MOVIE series with some gorgeous original NEW TITANS art pages.


Speaking about original art pages, I would be remiss if I didn´t include the last two NEW TEEN TITANS BLACK AND WHITE posts from Marv Wolfman´s birthday last year and Romeo Tanghal´s birthday respectively. Now since I have written so many posts about THE NEW TEEN TITANS, Marv Wolfman and George Perez there is nothing left to say that I haven´t already said so I only want to add that since this post is about Marv Wolfman I included some pages where I don´t have any original art to accompany it but which are part of my favorite scenes. The majority of them deal with the guest appearance of the surviving members of THE DOOM PATROL - and most prominently Cliff Steele a.k.a. Robotman - which brings us back to the tv series. It was so fraking awesome when Robotman appeared in THE NEW TEEN TITANS. But now without any further ado let´s get to my selection of pages for this post and kudos to Marv Wolfman and George Perez.


Since I am still hoping to write my big DEATH IN COMICS : THE DEATH OF TERRA post which covers the famous JUDAS CONTRACT I can´t include none of my TEEN TITANS links but you will find more than enough links to old posts, YouTube videos and clips in the entertainment section below.

Usually I try to switch things up with a comicbook related birthday, then one about a cult siren and then something else but - as longtime readers know - things don´t always work out that way. Most often than not they bulk together and so we have a few comicbook related birthdays first, then a lot of the usual sexbombs before we finally bring it back to comics.


I am skipping a lot of anniversaries - most of which I covered in previous postings - and tried to keep it limited to those birthdays where I have something new to add or links to old posts for my newer readers but I also have included two cult sirens who don´t appear very often in this part.

Jon Bogdanove turned 61 on May the 7th and while he started out at Marvel where I really saw his art on a regular basis was in the latter part of the John Byrne revamp of all the Superman books after John Byrne had left and these artists came in that soon would become favorites of mine like George Perez, Dan Jurgens, Ron Frenz, Bob McLeod or Kerry Gammill to name just a few. With a name like Tales From The Kryptonian I naturally wanted to seize the opportunity to put more art from that decade on the blog but as I realized after re - reading it again there´s really not much I could add to the belated Jon Bogdanove birthday post I wrote in 2016 .


Our next shoutout goes to not only one of the greatest comicbook artist but one of the greatest artist - period - whose anniversary was on the 8th of May. I have written at length in my unofficial series World´s Greatest Comic Artists about the great Moebius and his science fiction comics like The Incal as well as Jean Giraud´s worldfamous western comic Blueberry .


I even wrote a Movie Rummage Table special about the animated movie Time Masters which is a must see for fans of Moebius or animated sci fi.



We jump to May the 15th starting Today´s cult siren section with Brenda Bakke as the long - legged screen sensation celebrated her 56th birthday.


Brenda first made waves on the big screen in Hot Shots 2 which I found better than the first part. It´s one of the few cases where the sequel was better than the original since the first movie was just a collage of funny scenes while part 2 had almost a story. And of course sexy Miss Bakke. By the way, this is how I always pictured the women from the west doing it.


The next time I saw Miss Bakke - at least that I was aware of, see list below - was on American Gothic, one of the best horror series on tv ever. Here Brenda played the school teacher we all wished we had. Au Bakke !


Other tv shows Brenda appeared in are Ned Blessing, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Charmed, Popular, Dark Angel, NYPD Blue, Dollhouse, The Mentalist, Dark Blue, The Bridge, Supernatural, If Loving You Is Wrong, Criminal Minds : Beyond Borders and she also was in Tales from the Crypt : Demon Knight, Under Siege 2 : Dark Territory and L. A. Confidential. Happy birthday, Brenda and thanks for the mammaries !



The next anniversary is more for my german readers as sexy singer Sandra a.k.a. Sandra Cretu a.k.a. Sandra Ann Lauter turned 57 just Yesterday.


She was one of the biggest pop stars in Germany during the 80s and 90s ( she sold over 30 million records worldwide ) and she started her career as lead singer of the pop trio Arabesque before she was discovered by music producer Michel Cretu who launched her solo career. He married her later and strangely enough he celebrates his birthday on the same day as her.


Sandra and Michel had twins but they separated in 2008. In 2010 Sandra married Olaf Menges and they separated in 2014. The sexiest dimples in pop music was one of my big teenage crushes and I remember that one of my first music video tapes I bought was a collection of her greatest hits.


Since the links about Sandra that I posted last time don´t work anymore - and one was for another blog - here is the link to her official website .



Okay, as out of touch with current things as I am I HAVE heard of Lindsey Pelas who is the first celebrity birthday of Today. In fact I have posted one or two pictures of her on my blog without really knowing who Lindsey is.


Thanks to Google I now know that she is 28 years old, she was a PLAYBOY cyber girl and her incredible 32F ( ! ) - 22 - 31 measurements are all natural.

So far I have not seen any of the films in which she appears but judging from the GIFs I have found online that is something I will have to rectify.


What I have seen of her are some videos on YouTube from red carpet events which is ultimately the reason why I am mentioning her at all. For me it makes no sense to include somebody in the entertainment block if I don´t have a new video, a new picture or at least some links to old posts that I can include. Now in this video Lindsey is wearing what must be the best black dress I have ever seen and if you need any further proof about my cluelessness on trendy things : I thought Babes In Toyland is another movie Lindsey appeared in ( since there were so many other incredible mega busty sexbombs at this event ) when it is in fact a charity event.







The second anniversary of Today is the late and more than great Andre the Giant whom you might know even if you are not a wrestling fan since he appeared in a few movies, the most prominent being The Princess Bride.



I am sure it´s not only one of my favorite movies. Usually I don´t get to write about wrestling that often because in most cases I don´t have a good video but just some days ago I found this episode of WWF Saturday Night Main Event where the main event is a battle royal with Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan. This is the time when wrestling had its golden age.



Comic Tropes takes a look at the best writer for team books as Marv Wolfman has not only written The New Teen Titans and Avengers but The Tomb of Dracula which included the team of the Nightstalkers and Crisis on Infinite Earths with every character in the DC universe at that time.


And he managed to give plenty of screen time to each and every one.



Sometimes I get the feeling that I don´t include enough videos for my german readers so here is another look at Crayton´s comic collection which includes Junge Giganten which brought - some - parts of Marv Wolfman and George Perez New Teen Titans to german comic readers.



We close things out with the Nostalgia Critic´s comparison between the Teen Titans cartoon and Teen Titans Go ! but I have to say that up to this point we haven´t seen an accurate animated adaption of the real Teen Titans, neither in these shows nor in Young Justice. And I won´t even mention the Teen Titans : The Judas Contract animated feature film.



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


Have you ever considered piracy ? You´d make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

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