Happy birthday pop culture icon Beyonce !

This post has become necessary because I just kept adding more and more stuff about ultimate rumpshaker Beyonce to the post about Salma Hayek´s wardrobe malfunction on the german tv show WETTEN DASS .

The thing is that Today is Beyonce´s 33rd birthday but instead of doing a celebrity birthday post about her I kept working on the Salma Hayek post or rather the Salma Hayek posts since it got so long that I had to split it into two posts. So I did the second one Today, but like I said I kept adding so much Beyonce stuff that I´m bumping the second Salma Hayek post to Tomorrow. For anyone who reads the posts in a few months ( I hope it is finished until then ) it will really not make a difference if the second Salma Hayek post will be done Today or Tomorrow since it´s already after her birthday but I feel I should set the Beyonce post at her actual birthday.

Another reason for doing this post is that this way I can take the stuff about Beyonce down I had put into another post so it will be just about comics. I know that it´s just a minor alteration but some readers are very sensitive and this way I get to keep my cake and eat it at the same time.

Now usually I can fall back on something I wrote in my old boob blog for such an occassion but unfortunately I had put all of my Beyonce anecdotes into my big Destiny´s Child post. Some of the younger readers might not know that but Beyonce didn´t start out as a solo act but rather as part of a group called Destiny´s Child. I know that when I saw the first video of Destiny´s Child on Mtv ( they still played music videos at that time although they had already begun with the animes and the reality tv shows and such ) I wasn´t impressed. They were announced as the next big thing - I think the video was the remix for NO NO NO NO NO  - but frankly while the song didn´t sound too bad it didn´t exactly overwhelm me.

The moment when I really took notice of the group - in it´s original form before the various membership changes - was when their HOP ON THE BUS video aired. It´s still one of my favorites even if I can´t find it anywhere on DVDs or the internet. Anyway, the video was very sexy but the woman that got me going wasn´t Beyonce Knowles but Kelly Rowland.

I didn´t notice Beyonce until the - aptly enough - BOOTYLICIOUS video ( ? ) and Kelly is still one of my favorite performers. I´m glad that she stayed until the end - although you never know if there is not a reunion coming.

Anyway, Beyonce did start a solo career after a few years and while a lot of people didn´t think that was a good idea she managed to become a world famous singer, performer and actress. And no, I haven´t seen a lot of her movies because they either are comedies I can´t watch like the Austin Powers movies ( which in my opinion are only funny for american audiences because I don´t think it´s ridiculous that the world´s greatest spy is british ) or Dreamgirls which just has too much drama for my taste. My own life has already enough of that so I don´t need to watch movies to get even more. But who knows ? Maybe some day I´ll watch the movies.

Now since we are on the subject of movies I should probably mention that Beyonce was one of the candidates for my JUSTICE LEAGUE movie ( well, I casted the female members ) which I still haven´t done on the blog.

I cast her as Mari McCabe which went against the new JLA comic from that time since Ed Benes obviously based her appearance on Halle Berry.

And knowing what a big fan I am of Halle Berry you might think it obvious that I would do the same. But they do that with a lot of female black characters in comics and I don´t want to cast Halle in five different roles.

And I don´t use the term " black " to provoke. It´s just that " afro - american " sounds more like some pc nonsense to make it sound not as offensive while people have the same stereotypes in their minds.

Technical speaking Mari is " afro - african " since she was born in Afrika where there are also white people. And she doesn´t even wear an afro.

So, for playing the afro - african - american Justice Leaguer who is also a model I went with somebody who is hot, has starred in a few movies and is no stranger to the world of fashion. She even designs her own clothes.

So the bootylicious Beyonce got the role of Vixen in my fantasy casting for a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie, and boy she does bring out the animal in men.

Vixen is not really a good name for a woman in Germany as it sounds like wichsen or wixen ( I´m never sure what the correct form is ) the german word for spanking the monkey .... to keep the animal terminology.

When I did my posts about the best runs on Justice League or Justice League of America this was ways before Ed Benes became the regular penciler when they restarted the title. And I think one of the reasons why I never did a long post about that period was that I mentioned some of the issues as I was reading them. All in all I wouldn´t say that it was a bad run, they had some decent stories in there and it sure helped that they stuck a lot of hot babes in the series since that is Ed Benes´ forte.

This was probably one of the few times a comic company really took advantage of having a so called " babe artist " on a book even if Ed Benes can draw muscular men just as good. Of course it took them years before they had the idea to let him draw an all girls team like Birds of Prey.

Back to JUSTICE LEAGUE one of the big draws of the book - Ed Benes on art - was also one of it´s big problems since all the meticulous pencil work took that much longer so there were a lot of fill in artists and there were some issues where the art didn´t look really finished. The first story TORNADO´S PATH by Brad Meltzer was the best one since Ed Benes had already gotten a few issues in the can so he did the art on all issues.

The second story LIGHTNING SAGA was not as good because it was not as well rounded as the first story being a crossover with Justice Society of America. I liked the story because it brought the Legion of Super - Heroes back into DC continuity proper ( although some with different costumes )

and the West family returned after vanishing during INFINITE CRISIS

but it was all just build up for Geoff John´s LEGION OF THREE WORLDS epic. Man, you remember when Geoff Johns was writing good comics ?

And speaking about well rounded things : the things that probably most people remember from the issues is that JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA cover artist Michael Turner got a bit too enthusiastic about Power Girl´s breasts on the cover for issue 10 - which I can quite understand.

This was Brad Meltzer´s last story on the book and Dwayne McDuffy took over the writing reigns with the INJUSTICE LEAGUE story. The story didn´t live up to the expectations and there were a lot of guest artists on the book although Ed Benes managed to do the best parts like this double page spread. I thought I had a picture in better quality somewhere.

The next story SANCTUARY was another crossover, this time with the SALVATION RUN series which I still haven´t read. SALVATION RUN I mean, not the SANCTUARY story in JUSTICE LEAGUE. That I did read.

I don´t remember much of the story, there were some guest artists.

I liked the next story SECOND COMING much better which I got in the german trade for ten bucks at the comic fair in Leonberg. I don´t know if I already had the single issues and bought it as a present or if it´s still somewhere in my collection. In any case it had a slow beginning and turned into a parallel world story and longtime readers know that I love a good parallel world story. There were some guest artists in this one too which I think was the main reason why I got it in trade from because it´s easier to cope with that in the trade format. Or, like I said, it might have been a birthday present. Also Vixen was the main character of the story which had something to do with her origin and / or her powers.

Instead of just copying the abilities of animals she had started to copy the abilities of meta humans and the story resolved that somehow.

I don´t know if Brad Meltzer had been sowing the seeds for this or if Dwayne McDuffie had to do it this way because he had written himself into a corner in any way I liked the story and it also involved some trickster / spider deity that wove the threads of fate or such. And like I said, beautiful artwork of Vixen by Ed Benes in some of the issues.

Speaking about parallel worlds, Dwayne McDuffy tied his MILESTONE characters into the DC universe in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE which I would have enjoyed more if I had actually read any of the Milestone books.

Apart from that there were the usual event tie ins like BLACKEST NIGHT and FINAL CRISIS before James Robinson took over. Since he wrote the excellent STARMAN series I had high expectations for that but his take on the Justice League just couldn´t win me over and he brought in too many characters like Nightwing, Troja or Cyborg who for me belong in Titans.

But you see that even back then some forces at DC tried to shoehorn Cyborg into the Justice League. All in all I would say that the Justice League of America run by Brad Meltzer, Dwayne McDuffy and Ed Benes could be summed up as some really good stories with great art in it, a lot of crossover events and tie - ins and a lot of different guest artists.

You could see that the idea behind it was to present a really cohesive super hero community where they brought in such characters like Red Arrow who were second or third generation legacy heroes - which I think they tried to copy from Justice Society of America although they didn´t pull it off as good as the JSA did - with the Justice League at its core.

They also put a lot of female characters in prominent positions like Black Canary who became the chairwoman or Vixen who had a whole arc.

 Now part of this was obviously to give Ed Benes something to play with since he´s very apt at drawing the female form on the other side it doesn´t hurt to let the ladies show what they are capable of.

I especially liked the chance to read more about Vixen since I have not read the Detroit League run which is when she was last on the team.

Now that was a long tangent about the Justice League. So, time to return to our celebrity birthday babe Beyonce and wrap things up for Today.
 

These gifs are some of the many I found on the internet but because I didn´t find the one I was looking for I made a few of my own. 

Anyway, here´s to the inventor and living embodiment of the word bootylicious, happy 33rd birthday Beyonce and many happy returns.

Now I wanted to post the GET ON THE BUS video since that´s where my whole story with Destiny´s Child started but it should be no surprise that I couldn´t find it on YouTube either. So here´s the BOOTYLICIOUS video.



I also couldn´t find the CRAZY IN LOVE video where Beyonce first made her signature booty shake move which thankfully has become such an contagious thing that girls of all ages or nations start shaking their butts like there´s no Tomorrow whenever they hear " oh oh oh oh oh oh ", thank you for that Beyonce ! But I found this clip where Beyonce struts her stuff.



And since I mentioned Vixen and the Justice League cartoon in the post - and this is still a comic blog - here are some videos from that show.





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