Previously on Tales from the Kryptonian

It´s been a while since my last post and although some of you might have suspected I ended this blog on a high note - the 450th post - I was delayed by life, taxes and death. Well, not death but I was seriously injured.

But I´ll come to that in a moment. If I say I was delayed by life I mean that there have been the usual things that prevent me writing new posts.

Which are most importantly : old posts.

IF YOU´RE NOT CHEATING YOU´RE NOT TRYING

You see, when a post is written that doesn´t mean that I have finished working on it. There is proof reading and you can read and re - read a post a dozen times and still find some writing or spelling errors or a phrase that suddenly makes no sense which you somehow overlooked.

And that´s just the normal amount of fiddling with a post, in the case of my last two posts I was trying to find a way to achieve the following :

a.) make the 450th post a bit shorter so it´s easier to navigate
b.) put the cut parts in the previous " best of " posts
c.) include some of the links from last post in the " best of " list
d.) still keep the previous " best of " posts from becoming too long

As you might have seen - if you have been visiting the blog the past few days - I managed to do that, although some might say that´s cheating since the posts are not how I originally wrote them. But in answer to that I might quote a certain wrestler of mexican heritage - see header above. I´m all for keeping it real but the main thing is to keep this blog readable even if I have to take some shortcuts here and there. For the moment the last two posts are finished although I´m thinking about removing some pictures of Leslie Easterbrook in her wet t - shirt from post 450.

I had a readers request for a picture in higher resolution but with my old picture archive gone I had to rely on what I could find on the internet.

So while I found some pictures of that I´m not 100 percent sure they are in better quality then the ones I had posted so far. Nevertheless I included them in the post about MOVIE CULT SIREN JANET JONES since that was my big post about the mostly unknown sexbombs in the Police Academy movies as well as a lot of other stuff. Now I also included the pictures in post 450 since that was the post where the original request was made.

But because post 450 is a post that is supposed to be read by all new readers of TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN I´m thinking more about how the post is going to look four or five years down the road. So I only kept the new pictures on that one while all the pictures are still in the main post. Two pictures are more than enough to get the point along ( and if I have to explain what that is there´s no hope for you ) and it´s not the purpose of my latest " best of " post to go into all the details, much rather to point the readers in the direction of the best posts and give little hints - if deemed necessary - why the posts might be worth reading. If there are actually people who use the links at the bottom of the posts to find more interesting posts. You never know if anybody out there is really interested in what you write about or if you are just being obnoxious.

So I just hope all of this work on the " best of the best " posts helps some of the readers and it´s not just me wasting days over some HQ pictures.

One might question if it´s really worth it. But for one thing I really don´t get that many requests to begin with and I always try to satisfy my loyal readership - so to speak - as long as the demands are not for outright pornographic material. I know there are readers who don´t want to see too much pictures of scantily clad female bodies - unrelated or not - so I try to walk the fine line between tittilation and oversexed as best as I can. On the other side I know that there is another part of my readership that has less of a problem with that or just landed on this blog looking for Power Girl´s boob window or topless pictures of cult siren Joyce Hyser.

Yup, trying to keep both parts of my audience happy is not as easy as it was, way back when I also had another blog which one of my readers christened affectionately the BOOB BLOG. Man, I should have copyrighted that name. Anyway, I also posted all the pictures of Leslie Easterbrook´s wet t - shirt on the last post, just to be on the safe side. Because if the reader who requested them checks out the comments he will read that I added some pictures but if he checks the post there will be less pictures. So if he reads the next post he will see that I spoke the truth. I know, it´s a lot of trouble just for some hot babe wet t - shirt pictures but it goes a long way to keep the readers happy. And where´s the harm in that ?

But that´s not all I have kept myself busy with these last weeks. Yes, you might think a bloggers life is just all about wet t - shirts and nudie pics.

And while that sounds really glamorous it´s more than that. Coming back to post 450, now that I had put up this list with the best of the last five years on the blog ( and at the bottom of each new post from now on ) I felt it my duty to check the posts I included there one more time. I mean if I pick them as the best examples of this blog then the least I can do is give them another look to make sure they are okay. And since I had added some post to the previous " best of " posts I also had to check out all the links on that posts as well. I know, it sounds like a lot of unnecessary extra work but no matter how often you check a post you will always find a thing or two that needs changing. There is a typo you missed, a link you included that´s not working anymore or something you forgot to add. As a matter of fact, just Yesterday - when I initially wanted to write this post - I made some last minute changes to the post about movie siren Janet Jones I mentioned above : one of them adding a new video since the previous one posted of DINNER FOR NO ONE was deleted from YouTube.

Alas, not everything in these last days has been about old posts, some of the things that have kept me busy had to do with future posts. And past.

JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERIES OF GESPENSTER KRIMI´S COVERS

What I mean by future AND past posts is that one of the links on post 450 was to a post I wrote about german horror pulps I used to read in school.

Which made me go back to the many folders of my new picture archive only to discover that there was one full with material for a post I had planned to do but never gotten around to finish. I know, that´s business as usual with me. What was worse is that apparently I never got around to put all the material in order and instead just dumped it all into one folder. So I spent a few days on that which was extremely difficult since I had either lost or misplaced the website I originally used for reference.

Now the post I wanted to do - and which I WILL do in the next weeks - was about the covers for those german pulp series and one series in particular called GESPENSTER KRIMI  ( Ghost Crime Stories ) that had all kind of stories by many writers but also the first issues of DAMONA KING

or JOHN SINCLAIR before they got their own spin off titles. 

Now since I began doing the posts on my laptop there is a new section which I like to call DEJA VUE which is about comic cover homages.

Comic artists love to re - use old covers. And we fans also love them. It´s like an easter egg when we find a cover that pays homage to a previous one. Especially if it´s a famous one. And some artists are very good at it and put a lot of effort on it. Like Kevin Maguire. He does just one version after another of his cover for JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA 1 and each is better than the one before. Just check this one out with all The Doctors.

Well, with GESPENSTER KRIMI they didn´t even put that much work into it and just used the same cover for two different series. Cover of issue 81

and also the cover of issue 53 of the collector´s edition of DOKTOR ZAMORRA and Hexentanz becomes Das Hexendorf.

In some cases just part of the covers were swiped from movie posters, horror movie stills and even comic books. Yes, some of the covers were blatantly swiped from old war comics and even Marvel horror mags.

But that´s a topic for another post now that I have finally lined up all the necessary material. Except the unexpected stuff you didn´t prepare for.

Which always happens. At least the way I write this blog. It´s a way to keep things interesting for me since I never really know what I will write about in the end ( like I just plan on writing about what I do between posts and before you know it I´m writing about wet t - shirts and stuff ) but I´m not so sure my readers appreciate it. I like to think it´s one of the main attracting forces for readers ( that and Joyce Hyser topless ) that they never know what to expect when a new post is up but some of them have surely either caved in to my writing style or are just annoyed by it. But I guess it´s too late to change my approach to blogging now.

Speaking about possible topics for future posts and my other blog I was thinking about re - starting the UNKNOWN POWER GIRLS series here.

I have done a number of posts on Power Girl ( not so many lately since the NEW 52 fiasco ) and one of the arguments I have always heard is that she´s just the personification of male fantasies and women in the real world are not built like that. So I started a series to prove that they do.

There exist women like that. I haven´t thought about that series for a long time but with the sudden selfie explosion on the internet these last years I´m thinking about resurrecting it. The Power Girls are out there.

IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I WALK

Okay, at the beginning of the post I said we will talk about how I got injured in a minute and now it´s almost the end of the post which makes it really more than a minute if you go by the time it takes you to read it.

In fact if you go by the time it has taken me to write this it´s several hours so it´s about time to talk about it. Health is one of the things you only miss after it´s gone and for over a week or so I have serious troubles with my left knee. As usual all the troubles started on one of my free days just after I had spend the previous day going all over Ludwigsburg doing important stuff. So the next day I just wanted to stay in bed and relax and give my body time to regenerate. And that was exactly when my body decided to get a cramp in the left calf. After that my knee hurt a bit but not so much that I didn´t get to work. Normally that´s no problem because I have a day or two between work to heal. Unless I spend too much time working on the blog instead of taking care of myself.

To make matters worse I also didn´t get much sleep that week although I thought once my Mum was back in Spain that problem would be solved.

I mean, now there´s nobody who tells me to get up on my free day just to do stuff because you have to do stuff. No, that never made any sense to me either. Anyway, it looks like the new boss is just the same as the old boss because it seems my mother is not the only one who wants to force me to adapt to their daily rhythm whether it makes sense or not. Back to my knee injury it just kept getting worse and worse until last Saturday when I almost couldn´t walk at work. That did take me off posting for almost a week. Since then it´s gotten much better but at my age the healing process is a slow one. My older brother even did something nice for a change and got me a bandage without which I could not have worked Yesterday. Today I was at the doctor and I have to see an orthopedist to check if my meniscus is hurt. And because I spent most of the day doing that and on writing this post I didn´t get much better Today either.

ONE LAST THING OR TWO BEFORE CLOSING THE POST

Which brings us almost up to speed on what I have been doing the last few days. After all this personal stuff I wanted to mention CRIVENS ! COMICBOOKS, CARTOONS & CLASSIC COLLECTABLES ! a blog that I have frequented quite often the last few weeks. There are tons of great cover galleries like the newest ETERNAL galleries with Jack Kirby, John Byrne´s Fantastic Four or other lost or forgotten comic treasuries like Johnny Future, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents or Doctor Who. But Today I want to steer you towards two particular posts. The first one is part 1 of the fantastic FAVORITE COMICS OF THE PAST series, Daredevil issue 53 by Gene Colan.
  

The second one is about POWER RECORDS presents THE FANTASTIC FOUR - HOW IT BEGAN . I just love those Power Records since I heard of them.

It reprints issue 126 of FANTASTIC FOUR and the post has some nice John Buscema pictures and some YouTube videos with the audio of the record.

Wow, with eight posts this has really been a busy month even if only half of them were about comics. Just don´t expect this every month.

For Today´s video at the end of the post I picked one which I found because of the documentary INK - ALTER EGOS EXPOSED : DEATH & RESURRECTION Terry Hooper posted on his ComicBitsOnline blog.

That led me to a whole bunch of interesting comic videos on YouTube. Originally I wanted to post the BBC documentary IN SEARCH OF MOEBIUS ( known as MOEBIUS REDUX in Europe ) but since Terry already posted it last Sunday here is THE MASTERS OF COMIC BOOK ART from 1987. It´s one hour long but it´s totally worth it since it´s hosted by none other than sci fi legend and comic fan Harlan Ellison. Sadly there is just a statement by Steve Ditko which Harlan reads out but it features such great comic artists as Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Moebius, Frank Miller, Dave Sim, and Art Spiegelman.
   


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