A little bit of this a little bit of that

In my last post ( for which I couldn´t find a good title and I´m not faring much better with this one ) I wrote a lot about the AVENGER runs of two of comics greatest artists - John Buscema and George Perez - and Today I´m going to write about another one who I have mentioned a lot. Sorry, but I guess I´m really an old geezer, although judging by most of the stuff the big two put out you end up with the greats sooner or later.

By the way, I may be a little slow Today because blogger has changed its design making it more userfriendly or like I call it " a real pain in the ass to work with ". I don´t know why blogger keeps doing this because every time they have a new " userfriendly " design it´s more difficult to use.

They already did an update some time ago but I managed to keep the old design. But now it automatically switched to the new design and there´s nothing I can do. The last time they switched to a new design the HTML automatically crunched together and if you wanted to have some space between the pictures and the text ( which I prefer because otherwise it looks like s - word and people might think you don´t give a s - word about how your blog looks ) you had to put it in by hand every frikking time you changed something. Which I do a lot. So that was a real trainwreck and so far I could avoid it. But this new update seems as impossible to work with and I probably will have to copy / paste a lot of br / br HTML if I want the posts to look right. Thanks blogger for making my life easier.

I really don´t know why companies keep doing this unnecessary updates that really don´t help the customers. Computers were created to solve the problems we wouldn´t have without them and every time some website I´m visiting on a regular basis does another update it proves this. It´s the same with Google. Do you remember when looking for pictures on Google was easy and the page didn´t take forever to load and you could see the size of the pictures below ? Can anybody explain to me why that was changed ? Were people complaining that they found stuff too easy on the internet ? I really can´t understand it.

Anyway, so far the new blogger update is really complicating things because each time I have added or corrected something and press " actualize " I have to open a new window to continue working on the post.

Now actually I wanted to do this post on Monday because that was the 62nd birthday of horror hostess / movie star / cult siren / pop icon ELVIRA a.k.a. Mistress of the Dark ( massita ! ) and it would have been an excuse to mention her again and maybe put some new pictures of her on the blog, but as usual I didn´t get around to do it.

So since I´m already on the subject I want to mention my two posts I did about Elvira, one is what I call ELVIRA 101 - what you need to know about Elvira but were afraid to ask and the other one is about Elvira in the comics . This is a comicblog after all. There are a few more posts were Elvira is mentioned but those two are the main ones and you can find the others by clicking on the " Elvira " tag.


Now the reason why I couldn´t do the post on Monday was that I had to take a time out because I have a serious case of tendinitis in my left hand. For a few years I´ve had it in my right hand and it never properly healed but now I also have it in my left hand. And before you ask when I´m on the computer writing these posts I handle the mouse with the left hand while typing with the right. Which usually means my left hand is used more than the right one. Man, combined with my left shoulder acting up again and a case of stomach cramps I´m really a trainwreck.

But enough of my troubles, in the world of comics things don´t look too good either and let´s start with DC.

IS IT JUST ME OR ARE DC NEWS JUST TOO DEPRESSING RIGHT NOW ?

I have now officially given up on JUSTICE LEAGUE, which may sound strange since I don´t have it on my pull list. But I got the first storyline in hardcover and was planning on buying the next story as well.

But now I´ve had enough. And it´s not about Superman and Wonder Woman sharing spit ( Wonder Woman also kisses Apollo on the cover of her own mag this month who is technically her half - brother, so welcome to the Starfire / Catwoman club of DC hoes ) which has happened before. In fact here is a whole list of Justice Leaguers making out. So, no, Supes and Wonder Woman locking lipps is not a problem since it has happened numerous times before in Justice League lore. It also always made more sense than the whole Lois thing. Just read the MAN OF STEEL - WOMAN OF TISSUE essay you can find on the net. I mean really, if you had to choose between a woman who totally ignores you when you look like Buddy Blank but gets the hots when you look like a total hunk ( typical alpha male fixation ) and a woman who is your equal or even stronger than you who would you choose ? And you have to keep in mind that there are things that Superman can only talk about with Wonder Woman because Lois wouldn´t understand. Yes, I get the whole " Superman needs Lois to stay connected to normal people " angle but that still works if they are just platonic friends. Or when he interacts with Jimmy Olsen or his parents. So my problem is not the kiss.

My problem is that I wait for it to get better and become the lynchpin book DC promised it to be and it´s just not happening. I mean this is the book where the important things were supposed to happen and so far there only was a story about how they first met where they failed on all levels. And according to all sources it just doesn´t get better. What´s even worse is that apparently Jim Lee is leaving the book which was the only reason I was even remotely interested in the book. So, that´s it for me, I´ll read the issues my brother has ( IF I can find them in his labyrinth he calls a room ) but no more trades for me.

The next news didn´t come as a big surprise to me because as avid readers of this blog know I have mentioned a few times that while I´m reading RESURRECTION MAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL I´m not really enjoying it because the mandate to discontinue from their previous incarnations has not really benefitted the books. Well, it looks like the sales numbers are backing me up because both books were cancelled with issue 12. In the case of RESURRECTION MAN the whole " caught in a war between devils and angels " angle has really been done to death in comics, books, movies and tv series. So to take a series that was original because it was its own thing and turn it into a more generic mystery series backfired. Because now it had to compete with all the other mainstream versions and it clearly was not in the top category. As for JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONLA : if you build something special like with JUSTICE LEAGUE - GENERATION LOST only to totally ignore it and start from scratch you can´t hardly blame the readers for losing interest.

There also is the whole Liefeld thing on the internet but quite frankly I´m not that much interested. Rob Liefeld has always been someone who polarizes people and while I´m not his biggest fan I have to say that I read his Captain America run during the whole HEROES REBORN brouhaha which was not the worst comic I read.

To tell the truth SPIDER - MAN CHAPTER ONE was much worse and that was written and drawn by John Byrne who I´m a big fan of. So all I want to say is that if you hire Rob Liefeld you must know that there will be some scandal involved one way or the other. And really, I don´t want to comment on all the firings and rewrites and creative team changes at DC. If you read my blog you should know what I think about the whole DC relaunch and as long as it´s successful where sales are concerned DC will continue on this course. And all the people who are defending DC are interested in keeping their jobs for which I can´t fault them. There is an old german saying : " Whose bread I eat, those song I sing. " ( I think in english its " He who pays the piper, calls the tune. " ) and I think it applies here.

Now there is one last DC thing I want to comment on which is the new cover for CATWOMAN 0. It seems the old one was too anatomically impossible and too ventilated.

So they ordered a new one that´s more in line what a human body can really do and a bit more covered up. Which confused me a bit because I thought their whole new approach with Catwoman was to go back to her origins as a former prostitute. But lately DC has been contradicting itself on a daily basis so who knows ?

IT`S OFFICIALLY ALAN DAVIS MONTH NOW

That´s right, Alan Davis seems to slowly become the hardest working man in comics. Not only does he do at least a dozen covers each month he also has a new three part CLAN DESTINE story coming out in FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL 33, DAREDEVIL ANNUAL 1 and WOLVERINE ANNUAL 1.

On top of that he also did the artwork on MIGHTY THOR 18 which is the prologue to the EVERYTHING BURNS storyline that runs through the Thor books. He doesn´t do the entire crossover but he provides covers and I think he does the interiors for MIGHTY THOR 20 which has a nice cover

that pays homage to the cover of one of the best Spider - Man issues ever, the legendary issue 33 by Lee and Ditko. ( You can find an animated version of this cover and three others by Kerry Callen right here )

But really, more Alan Davis comics is excellent news. Now if he would only do a series on a regular basis. As for all the other Marvel books right now I´m still saving all the AVENGERS VS X - MEN books so I can read them in one sitting. If that´s a good thing or not - well, I´ll find out pretty soon. And as for the MARVEL NOW books, I´m not sure how Marvel plans to get new readers with even more new books but if I can get my hands on a comic by Mike Allred I´ll take it.

HOW FREE COMICS LEAD TO ME BUYING MORE COMICS

In one of my past posting I pimped my comicshop, the SAMMLERECKE in Esslingen ( which I´m going to mention in this post later on ) so Today I´m giving a shoutout to one of my online comicshops, ANDI`S COMIC EXPRESS . And let me tell you, they sometimes take the express part very serious.

One of the reasons I prefer to order from them instead of other online comicshops is that you get one free comic for every 10 EUROS you spend. Now the books you get are usually the books from FREE COMIC BOOK DAY or GRATIS COMIC TAG but this time they also had some free Halloween Special comics so I ordered four of them.

The first one was LAUGH COMICS 1 ( I don´t think this was a Halloween special ), that has various short Archie strips from diferent art teams.

Like all of the free comics I ordered it´s poketbook sized and has 16 pages. I always like to check out new Archie stuff since it´s something I´m not that familiar with since it´s been decades since I read it on a regular basis. But to tell the truth so far the only thing I found really interesting is the MARRIED LIFE books by Norm Breyfogle. I don´t know if it´s the art by one of my favorite Batman artists or the fact that it´s not only a series of gags / stories but rather an ongoing plotline. But in comparision to this the other comics I have seen seem uninteresting. But who knows ? There might be an Archie comic or book that will give me the Archie bug yet. There are a few books available at amazon but so far they are not in my price range and I really don´t have the budget to just get a few hardcover collections on a whim. What I can definitely say is that the Archie comics by Dan DeCarlo look the most interesting.

The second one was the 2008 BONE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL which really doesn´t have anything new. The part that is presented here is a sequence with Bone, Rose, Grandma and the scary rat creatures so it is appropiate for a Halloween special. Like I said, nothing new but for me it´s the first time to see these pages in gorgeous colour. So far I only have the regular edition of the series, which means a few trades and the rest in single issues but if I win the lottery I´l probably get the ONE VOLUME EDITION and the colored version. The only thing that weirded me out is that the last page in this comic is obviously done by Paul Pope and while he does have his merit and I have a few of his comics in my possession it´s like being hit in the head by a two by four.

A PEANUTS HALLOWEEN was the third free comic I got and you really can´t go wrong with Peanuts and Halloween. Since it couldn´t be any other way the book ( that has some black and white pages not like the other free comics ) includes a few strips with Linus trying to spread the gospel about The Great Pumpkin.

As most Peanuts strips it´s just too hilarious and while I probably won´t be able to buy all of Fantagraphics COMPLETE PEANUTS editions I´d like to get one with some Halloween strips.

But the real piece of resistance was the HOT STUFF HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2010. Of all the Harvey comics this was the one I was really not familiar with.

Of course I had read some comics with Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost ( who for some strange reason was Casper the Little Ghost in Germany ) and Wendy the Witch when I was just a little tyke.

But I don´t think I ever saw anything about Hot Stuff, the Little Devil. Nevertheless this was the comic I kept coming back to. After a few days of flipping through the pages again and again I decided to go on the internet and I really found a collection with comics, indeed, the first comics were the same as in the Halloween Special so I could keep on reading from where I left off.

It´s a 200 page collection from Dark Horse, the HARVEY COMICS TREASURY - VOLUME 2 not to be confused with the HARVEY CLASSICS VOLUME 3 : HOT STUFF also from Dark Horse. The collection I got has only 200 pages and is smaller but it´s only 15 bucks and all the pages are in color. If you only want to read the comics and you like the color versions better this is the book for you.

Now if you are more interested in the history around the HOT STUFF comics, then you should get the HARVEY CLASSICS VOLUME 3 which is bigger and more expensive but you get 480 pages of strips and background info.

The reason why I didn´t order this right away was that I really didn´t care for the black and white strips and since this is my first exposure to the HOT STUFF comics I wasn´t sure how much I would like this. But I think I might just get this after I´m done reading the trade I have. And who knows, after that I might check out the volumes with Casper and Richie Rich which are also available from Dark Horse.

RIDING WITH THE KING

Now a few posts ago I wrote about some of the goodies I got from the second hand section of my comic store but there are some goodies I didn´t mention like THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR 54. You see ? I told you that we would talk about another one of the great comic artists later.

When I first came across the work of Jack Kirby, I didn’t get it. At the time, the man who was already called King was beyond me. I thought the art was ugly. I thought the writing was overwrought and overlong. The stories themselves seemed needlessly complicated. I was, of course, wrong.

This was not written by me but rather by fellow blogger Max Romero in his post JACK KIRBY, THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING on his blog GREAT CEASAR´S POST ! which can be found on the blog roll of this very blog. Of course the same thing happened to me and possibly thousands of comic readers throughout the ages. The genius of Kirby is not something you get the first time around and you have to cultivate your tastes before you can really appreciate it. But since I have already written a few times about this ( Jack Kirby is a constant topic on this blog with his brilliant comics like KAMANDI or OMAC ) we can skip that part. No, the reason why I mention it at all is that after almost a month of reading this in little bits to avoid the possibility of my brain exploding because of an overload of Kirby goodness I finally finished it Yesterday. So when I ordered the HOT STUFF collection I wanted to order something else because I don´t like to place an order at amazon for just one thing. So I ordered the JACK KIRBY, KING OF COMICS hardcover by Mark Evanier which I got Today. So much for avoiding a Kirby overload.

JACK KIRBY, KING OF COMICS is oversized, 224 pages thick and just chock full of gorgeous pieces by Kirby. Now I tried to post this as soon as I could because I got my copy for 21 EUROS which is a real steal with a regular price of 40 Dollars. But by the time I finally got all the material for this post it was already too late. They only have one copy left and the price is 33 EUROS at the moment. It´s like I always say, with amazon you snooze, you loose. Nevertheless it´s a great book and you should definitely check it out. I have only had the time to flip through it ( I spent most of the time Today writing this post, you know ) but if I ever have a nerdgasm it will be from this book. On one page I thought it was cut wrong because it was shorter than the other pages - until I discovered the reason for the different size was that it was a foldout of this mindblowing Jack Kirby piece colored by Alex Ross.

Another wonderful piece is this final splashpage with a really terrifying Silver Surfer. I always thought that John Buscema was the definite Silver Surfer artist but this piece can really make you soil your pants.

So this book gets my recommendation and if you say that this is too expensive for you get an issue of the JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR ( there are some collections of them available on amazon and at good comicshops, online and otherwise ) because they are worth it for the original Jack Kirby pages alone. You can learn more from such a page than from reading a thick book about how to draw comics.

Now I hate to cut things short right here ( I might add a few more things Tomorrow ) but once again I´m already four hours past bedtime so I better end this.

As I have mentioned the PEANUTS in my post Today´s clip is the song LINUS & LUCY by George Winston. It´s the best known song from the soundtrack and if you really like Jazz music see if you can find it somewhere.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest

Think you´re the first giant girl with a hammer and no face that´s tried to kill me ?

I want more John Buscema hardcovers

You know, getting a colonoscopy is not as much fun as one might think as I can now tell you from personal experience. Because just this Tuesday I had to undergo the procedure and I still haven´t fully recovered yet.

Although to tell the truth I was narcotized for most of the examination. The nurse asked me if I wanted to sleep during the exam and I was only too willing to go for that option. Sign me up for that, nurse.

I mean, do I really want to be awake while some guy puts an anal probe in my backside that is probably bigger than the anal thingie Cartman got shoved into his anus by aliens in SOUTH PARK which transformed into a giant satellite dish ? Nope. Not a big fan of that.

So the second - worst thing was getting the infusion because the nurse couldn´t find a good vein and had to stick the needle into me various times : into the crook of my left arm, my left hand, the crook of my right arm and a few times in my right hand where she finally found a decent vein. That was quite painful and at the end I felt like a pin cushion and was ready to get a super villain outfit, call myself Porcupine and to be mounted as a trophy at Avengers Mansion. On the other hand I really slept during the whole thing and aside from the fact that I tried to roll on my right side ( I usually sleep on the right side but for the examination I had to lie on the left side ) everything went well. Thank god for small favors.

Now as I said the whole needle thing was the second - worst thing about the colonoscopy because the worst thing is taking all the laxative to clear out your bowels. That´s just awful. The day before the examination you are not allowed to eat solid food, just soup without any indigrients and the first thing you have to take is magnesium sulfate. No kidding.

I´m not sure if that´s really the best modern science can come up with or if the medics were just fooling around with me. I mean, magnesia sulfurica, really ? That sounds more like something Merlin would use in medivial times and not what you get from a modern doctor. And you have to take it twice.

But that´s not the worst part. No, not even the fact that you have to take the magnesium sulfate twice. The worst is that as a continuation you have to take something called Endofalk and that´s the part where you wish you could take more magnesium sulfate instead. Because while it says " pinnaple / lemon flavoured " on the package it really tastes awful and after drinking more than two glasses you are ready to empty your bowels but going the other route. And you have to drink 2 liters in 1 hour of the stuff. Which is about the time when drinking two glasses of magnesium sulfate sounds like child´s play in comparision. So the whole examination was not so tough but the preparation was the killer.

AVENGERS - ALMOST ASSEMBLED or RÄCHER SAMMELN

Now you may recall that I mentioned in my first post about this year´s visit to Erlangen how I bought volumes four and five of Kurt Busiek´s AVENGERS run that started with George Perez as the regular artist. I had already gotten volume three so this was a no - brainer.

The only downside was that the first two volumes were out of print as hardcovers and I really didn´t want to get the new reprints since they only have the trades so far. A really strange thing about that is that the trades cost as much as the original hardcover version. What´s up with that ? Is this the difference because of the inflation or has somebody in marketing decided that the old hardcovers were priced too low and now they want to put out the trades for the same price as the old hardcovers so they can charge even more when they reprint volumes 1 and 2 as hardcovers ? In any case that is just speculation and it was redundant since I couldn´t find the old hardcovers anyway and I wasn´t about to get the trades.

Well, this all changed when I found somebody who was selling the first volume of the AVENGERS ASSEMBLE run at amazon.de for a reasonable price. Okay, it was ten bucks above the original price ( including shipment and package ) but that´s not so bad for an out - of - print hardcover that´s impossible to find. Since I didn´t buy it directly from amazon.de it isn´t in pristine condition but it´s in better shape than the last hardcover I bought from another seller over amazon. That was the new printing hardcover AVENGERS - UNDER SIEGE which looked like somebody dragged it over five miles of bad road with the local school bus. The inside is okay but from the outside it looks like it has seen some action during a military engagement or something.

Yes, I know. Why do I need the hardcover if I already have the single issues AND the trade with the beautiful Jusko cover ? It´s like I said before : we always buy the same comics over and over.

Ever since I got the AVENGERS - ASSAULT ON OLYMPUS hardcover I wanted the companion piece. Okay, you might ask, is there a difference between the trade and the more expensive new hardcover printing of UNDER SIEGE ? First of all, the hardcover includes ALL the covers which are not in the trade and it also includes the last page of issue 271 and the complete issue 272 which was part of a crossover with the ALPHA FLIGHT series. In the trade the whole part with Namor and Marrina is cut and although it is not really necessary it gives a more complete picture of why Namor is absent during the whole UNDER SIEGE fight. In the trade it looks like he went off to tend to his affairs in Atlantis and that´s all she wrote.

Not included ( neither in the trade nor in the hardcover ) is AMAZING SPDER - MAN 283 in which Spidey battles Titania and the Absorbing Man and which takes place between issue 274 and 275 of AVENGERS and AVENGERS WEST COAST 16 starring Tiger Shark and Wirlwind and which is an epilogue. I´m not sure if these issues really have to be included.

The other difference is the better quality of paper and printing in the hardcover. While I like the original trade with it´s woodier paper and the original pixelated printing the hardcover just looks better, brighter and slicker since not only is it printed on glossy paper but the coloring was completely redone. And while recoloring by Marvel CAN completely destroy the art like in the TALES OF ASGARD HC it works really well in this case.

As for the story, it´s one of THE best Avengers stories on so many levels and for so many reasons not least because it´s the unofficial secret origin of the super villain group that should become the THUNDERBOLTS.

Great art, great story and if you really haven´t read it you must get it. Get the hardcover, get the trade or look for the original issues in the dollar bins, get it any way you can - just read it. By the way, is it really a coincidence that one of the best Captain America villains is german ?

I guess it really is true that Nazis are the better villains. Although where Cap is concerned most of his villains are Nazis like the Red Skull. Maybe that´s why Captain America is one of the greatest superheroes - he grew up on a steady diet of crushing Nazis.

Now having both hardcovers I sure would like it if Marvel continued with producing these high - end collections of John Buscema´s 2nd Avengers run. Even if Roger Stern only stayed until the end of the ASSAULT ON OLYMPUS story line there are still a few good stories that followed ( or even came before UNDER SIEGE ) that are worth to be collected.

What I also crave is a hardcover that collects Walter Simonson´s story in which Nebula joins the Council of Cross - Time Kangs and tries to use the Avengers to penetrate a Time Bubble that appears in our century and engulfs everything up to ten years in the future. The story starts here

and apparently ended in AVENGERS 297

only to continue in FANTASTIC FOUR 337

and reach its conclusion in FANTASTIC FOUR 341.

Apparently the group of superheroes that managed to breach the Time Bubble in one of Nebula´s visions wasn´t the Avengers but the Fantastic Four accompanied by Iron Man and Thor. You can say what you want but it takes chuzpe to write the epilogue to your Fantastic Four story during a stint on Avengers. And Walter Simonson even managed to to turn that into a kick - ass story that managed to disassemble the Avengers without killing off Avengers left and right. Read ´em and learn, Bendis.

Now with the 4 issues of AVENGERS and 5 issues of FANTASTIC FOUR you would have quite the satisfying chunk ( 9 issues in one big story ) and you could even include issues 291 to 293 of AVENGERS which is when Nebula first begins to intrude into Dr. Druid´s dreams. Okay, maybe that would be a really big hardcover with 12 issues but the three issues, that mainly deal with the final fate of Marrina are not enough for a hardcover of it´s own ( unless you include some ALPHA FLIGHT issues by John Byrne with Marrina and Namor ). And otherwise you had to pack them together with issues 286 to 290 which make up the HEAVY METAL story that comes directly after ASSAULT ON OLYMPUS and in which the Avengers go up against the Fixer, the Mad Thinker´s android, a Kree Sentry, the Super Adaptoid and Machine Man.

Anyway, I don´t care which stories they do collect as long as they continue with the Avengers issues by John Buscema. Here are a few links if you want to read more about that golden Avengers period :

Avengers UNDER SIEGE by Ye Olde School Café part 1 / part 2

Marvel Comics of the 1980´s look at Roger Stern´s AVENGERS run

Top 10 Avengers stories ranked by iFanboy

And speaking about golden Avengers periods with great art, before I started going on this tangent I was talking about volume 1 of Busiek´s and Perez´ AVENGERS ASSEMBLE book which is another masterpiece.

The hardcover collects issues 1 to 11 of the series as well as the AVENGERS / SQUADRON SUPREME ANNUAL ´98 by Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco ( Yay ! ) and the ROUGH CUT EDITION of issue 1 with the pencils for the full issue and the script, all the variant covers, other covers and AVENGERS posters by George Perez and an introduction by Kurt Busiek as well as some additional thoughts on the Avengers. Not a bad package all things considered.

Now while I really want to wait with re - reading this run until I have managed to track down volume 2 I caught myself starting to read it just Yesterday. I can´t help it, I look at the art and then I flip through the pages and then I come across a favorite scene or something else that´s cool and I totally forgot and suddenly I have read half an issue and begun the next.

And even if the art looks a bit different then what I last read of George Perez ( which was issue 8 of the new SUPERGIRL book ) after a few pages you are so immersed in reading that you just don´t notice anymore. And George Perez´ art in this one could really be used for a textbook on how to draw superhero team books. I remember when his return as a regular penciler on AVENGERS was announced a lot of people were not sure if he could maintain a monthly output and speculated there would be some fill - in issues included. Well, chupate eso, George Perez not only did his monthly duties with an enthusiasm that put a lot of the " hot artists " from that period to shame he also delivered mindboggling doublepage spreads with hundreds of characters on one page or pages with an unbelievable amount of panels and detail.

One such example is the last page of issue 4, the big " Who´s going to end up on the Avengers roster ? " issue.

It´s a big picture of the new Avengers team striking a pose and Captain America shouting the obligatory trademark " Avengers Assemble ! " battle cry, with two small panels with the reporters on the upper left corner and a small insert panel with Hawkeye on the lower right corner ( I whish I had a better scan of it ). The last panel which is a closeup on Hawkeye who smugly says : " And the crowd goes wild - " is really the icing on the cake.

I don´t know if it was in the script or if George Perez added it but it´s just another example of superb storytelling in this series. It really isn´t necessary to understand or tell the story but it´s really such a tiny detail that nevertheless manages to give the issue the extra Ommph. Especially if you have read the issue and know what Hawkeye gives up and why.

Oh and by the way, there were some fill - in issues by other artist but counting all the doublesized issues he did George Perez ends up with 36 issues in 3 years which means one issue per month. Not bad for an old guy. Anyway, as I said before this is one of the best AVENGERS runs and if you have the chance to get any of the collections for a good price anywhere ( especially the first three volumes ) you should take it.

OHM, OOMMPH, OH LA LA ( I BLAME IT ON FACEBOOK )

People who try to follow me on facebook may have noticed that I don´t post there so often and here´s one of the reasons why :

This week I posted this video ( alternative link ) on facebook but it seems it can´t be seen outside of Germany. I tried to embedd it but neither PRO 7 nor myvideo seems to think that´s a necessary function ( hence the links above ) and I couldn´t find it on YouTube although I´m not sure that would have helped much.


The video - for those that can´t see it - is from the sixth season of SWITCH RELOADED ( frightening that the sequel to SWITCH managed to get a sixth season, isn´t it ? ), a show that does parodies of everything on german tv which sometimes are good and sometimes not so good. As coincidence would have it, I stumbled upon this particular clip while switching through the channels ( sometimes nomen EST omen ).

The woman is Martina Hill who plays such german celebrities like Sonya Kraus, Heidi Klum ( she really nails her voice ) on SWITCH RELOADED or beginning with this season Daniela Katzenberger ( she does an even better job on Daniela´s cleavage ). I had no idea who this woman, Tatjana Ohm, was and I guess I´m not really up to date with big breasted women on german tv. Anyway, 42 years old news speaker Tatjana Ohm is on N24, one of various news channels in Germany. Here´s her wikipedia entry and sorry, there is no english version available.


But that just shows you that you never know where you might find interesting things. To think that she was on tv all those years and I never knew. Ah, the cleavages I have missed. And now that I mentioned her so much I think it´s time to post a short clip with the original. Because YouTube blocked the clip I originally posted I added this short clip with Tatjana Ohm which I personally uploaded on this blog. It took me a few hours to find one and it´s the only one I found. The woman who does the weather is Miriam Pede, by the way.


Damn, I got sidetracked again with all my personal stuff and all the talk about hot women and big boobs this starts to read like an episode of ComicGeekSpeak with Uncle Sal. Which sometimes is the only thing to get me through the day. Anyway, since I should be in bed for 5 hours it´s time to wrap it up. Maybe I can continue my Erlangen report next time but it´s like every time I sit down to do it something else comes up.

Since I will probably be re - writing this post Tomorrow I guess I should mention that one of the major tv sexbombs of my misspent youth, Heather Thomas celebrates her 55th birthday on that very day.

For generations of adolescent young boys the highlight of the week was the short moment on FALL GUY where she appeared in her blue bikini. There also was hot Markie Post on the show who stole the scene whenever she ot a chance to show off her incredible 36 - 24 - 36 measurements in a bikini but she didn´t get much of the spotlight until the third season.

Anyway, you can read more about this in my POP CULTURE TV SIREN MARKIE POST entry which you can find in the POPULAR POSTS section. It´s also one of the posts that get the most spam. Back to sexy Heather Thomas, she didn´t have much success outside of FALL GUY and the movie ZAPPED probably because she didn´t do nude scenes but she still was on one of the best known tv shows around the world and that has to count for something. So happy 55th anniversary Heather Thomas, many happy returns and thanks for the blue bikini and all the other bikinis !

Since I mentioned AEON FLUX and LIQUID TELEVISION in my last post here is a clip from DOGBOY, one of my favorite serials on the show. You know, in retrospect it is really strange what kind of weird stuff I used to watch.

The story and the plastic hairdos are just hilarious, I only wish I had a longer clip. There are some LIQUID TELEVISION shorts included in the DVD extras of the AEON FLUX DVD but sadly no DOGBOY.



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