Shownotes and upcoming attractions post

It´s been a while since my last post so I thought it way past time to do a post about what I have been up to the last few weeks and to tell my readers what they can look forward to in the next days and months.

If I get to do that many posts in the future. Because as of this month my physiotherapy is officially over which means that I could still profit from more physio but according to my orthopedist I´m well enough to start working again which is good enough for the unemployment office.

So it´s back again to looking for a new job and writing applications. I still haven´t gotten the chance to talk with my old boss but I know they have a new guy in my old job ( hey, I knew going into my operation that with the time it took me to get my surgery and the rehab and then waiting for the ok from the doc that they just had to get a new guy to do the job because somebody has to keep things clean ) and my orthopedist told me that if I didn´t get another job I would have another knee operation within a year.

And since I want to avoid that I´ll have to look for a new field of work. I thought the job at the Stadionbad would be the last job I applied for and I would do that until I finally go on pension - or croak, whichever happens first. But once again life stays interesting while we make other plans.

THE EMPEROR`S NEW BLOG or SAME AS IT NEVER WAS

Speaking of change, you may have noticed that the look of the blog has changed again. Against my better judgement I changed the layout to the typical " all black " look during Halloween ( last time I did that it took me quite some work to change it back ) but I have already grown tired of it.

So in tune with the season the black is gone in favor of the autumn leaves and in a few months we will be back to the old all snow look. Which I guess will stay as long as the snow or until I feel the need to change it again. Another thing I changed was the header picture. This was the first one I made when I started TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN back in 2006 :

Now I selected the covers for that one to include all the stuff about comics I liked at that time : the Avengers, George Perez, Captain America, Ed McGuinness, Spider - Man, iconic comic covers like the " Spider - Man No More " cover, Spider - Man´s black costume, Thor, Wolverine, Mike Deodato, Carlos Pacheco, Superman and Batman, Carlos Pacheco´s timey wimey Superman / Batman story, Wonder Woman, Arthur Adams, Power Girl, Adam Hughes, Adam Hughes drawing Power Girl, Carlos Pacheco again, this time on the JSA drawing Power Girl ( have I mentioned I´m obsessed with Power Girl ? ) you know, all that stuff.

This was way before the Marvel NOW and DC´s NEW 52 fiasco when I was reading - and enjoying - a lot of the comics as they actual came out. So fast forward a few years and I had to face the fact that I was not reading the new stuff so much and less single issues in favor of the classic stuff and collected editions - favorably in hardcover. Now I could have just kept the old header which in itself would have been enough of a statement but as the topics of my posts had changed I thought that should be reflected.

This time around I also included my favorite comic stuff but also some personal key issues : Mike Grell´s stint on the Legion of Super - Heroes with the disco costumes created by Dave Cockrum which I mostly read in the SUPERMAN SUPERBAND version ( thus incorporating german comics ).

AVENGERS 81 by John Buscema which was the first original US comic of the Avengers where I saw the Vision for the first time, Gene Colan´s DOCTOR STRANGE ( which combines one of my favorite characters and one of my favorite artists ) always fighting the dread Dormammu, The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill which is one of the best stories from the definite Thor run by Walter Simonson, another favorite artist, Yaya Han - what can I say ? I wanted to bring in a hot woman, my love for asian sexbombs and cosplayers and here I got all three things in one. I know, I had to relinquish all others like Markie Post or Janet Jackson for that but I´m obsessed with Yaya Han. And here I can say that it IS comic related.

Even if it does kind of spoil the number one spot of my favorite costumes for my big Yaya Han post. But that´s still a few weeks away - IF I ever get around to do it. Speaking about women I´m obsessed with Power Girl is still very high on that list even if I´m not mentioning her as often as I used to. I guess most of my readers have already heard enough about her and it´s not like there are any new good comics with her around that would wanton another post. The picture I used is by Joe Gravel and I had to modify it a little to use it because in the original version you could see her nipples. It´s a shame that artist´s hilarious hero sketches are almost entirely not safe for work but I found a few that are still risky but safe to post here so there will be more of them popping up in the near future. 

What else did I put in the new header pic ? UNCANNY X - MEN 196 by Chris Claremont and John Romita Jr. thus giving props to one of my favorite writers and one of my favorite artists at the same time as one of my favorite crossovers SECRET WARS II. It´s one of the best issues from one of the best runs on UNCANNY X - MEN which I have buy again and again in different versions and different languages. In fact I just bought it again as part of the SECRET WARS II omnibus AND a pocket book by Panini UK.

There´s also Will Eisner´s THE SPIRIT and the cover of the first german hardcover I bought of that series and last but not least maybe Marvel´s best Bronze Age series EVER : Dough Moench and Mike Zeck´s SHANG CHI - MASTER OF KUNG FU which will probably never be reprinted even if Disney could afford it to get the rights for the Sax Rohmer characters.

Anyway, all this was in the new header picture of which I made a special " all black and creepy " version just for Halloween. But when it was time to go back to the old header pic I decided to make a few changes instead.

First off I changed the picture for Will Eisner´s THE SPIRIT. While it was the cover of the first german hardcover I bought it was not the first cover of the Spirit I saw. That was the one with Spirit on the tracks and since that is the first one I always think about when someone mentions THE SPIRIT I went with that one instead. I also made the part with the Vision and the Scarlet Witch from AVENGERS 81 bigger because that was the really important part. I also made the part with sexy Yaya Han bigger.

And after I had already posted that I decided that since I named my blog after one of my favorite horror comics I could also incorporate the logo.

I hope you like the new header and I can keep it a while. Well I guess by now most readers are bored enough so let´s get to more exciting news.

THE RETURN OF THE BIG CHRISTMAS CONTEST

Yup, once again I have decided to give away free comics on Christmas and since I did not do this last year the pile is extra big even though I did not buy as many comics online this year. But I DID order the SECRET WARS II omnibus at one online comic store where you get one free comic ( from FREE COMIC BOOK DAY or GRATIS COMIC TAG ) per every 10 EUROS spent so this got me 10 free comics with one order. I´m getting one final order this Saturday and then I can make the list of free comics I´m giving away which will be announced together with the rules on a separate blog post.

In fact this is one of the reasons why I did not write this post Yesterday. You see, in preparation for the big Christmas Contest I was looking for some pictures to post when I came upon this post where you can see most of the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics from 2015 ( you have to scroll down to see the others ). So instead of writing this post I spend most of the day Yesterday going over all the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics of 2015 which is the reason you didn´t get any new content here Yesterday - sorry - but I found a few cool ones that will without a doubt become a part of the giveaway pile. Which equals more free comics for my readers.

By the way, I read the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY issue of Disney´s ALL NEW AVENGERS and this prevented me from spending any money on this crap.

The art by Mahmud Asrar is the only good thing of the issue and he must be pissed that he doesn´t get to draw the REAL Avengers. Except for Iron Man and the Vision IF those are the real Iron Man and the real Vision. Still their costumes look all effed up man. But if they are the real ones they and the Falcon are the only veterans on the team. And the story. Okay, Mark Waid is a good writer but there are two things wrong with the story.

Even IF the Avengers would rate the life of a civilian higher than going after the bad guy ( and there are many cases in the teams history where they were willing to sacrifice a civilian or one of their own to save a lot of people ) would it not have been enough if ONE of the noobs saved the civilian ? The other two could still have gone after Radioactive Man. Does it really take all three of them to save one guy who is just falling ? He´s not even in a death trap that requires the powers of all three of them. I mean it looks like Kid Nova is faster than Ultimate Spider - Man anyway so Mike Morales is just wasting time trying to save him. And I don´t want to sound like I´m prejudiced against the new Ms. Marvel but what exactly does she do apart from uselessly standing around and yelling at the others what to do ? That´s really bad teamwork. Which gets us to the real crux.

Even if you can swallow all this crap and the feelgood message that " the life of a civilian is more important than letting the crook get away " isn´t that something that should have been covered in a training session instead of a field mission where real lives are at stake ? You really can´t have your cake and eat it. Either the lives of civilians are important or not but if they are you can´t just risk them in the hopes that three kids will make the right choice and learn a valuable lesson at the same time.

 
Yes, I know that the Avengers have always had recruits or members in training but the training and the missions were always separate things.

If you send members out on a field mission their combat training should be already finished and if that´s not the case then they don´t belong in the field. When did this crap start that new Avenger members get their training on the fly while endangering hundreds of civilians ? The Avengers have like a gazillion members now so they don´t really NEED to have three unsure, untested question marks among them ( four if you include Thora ) on important or dangerous missions. They have more members than the YMCA at this point. So unless you want to pander to the masses the lineup doesn´t make any sense. Man, does anybody remember back when new Avengers members - in - training did their actual training WHILE training and not on missions ? Because on the mission you bring your a - game.

So while I already thought that the AVENGERS franchise went down the toilet when Jonathan Hickman started his run the FREE COMIC BOOK DAY actually does a good job of showing what the new series will be all about so I can safely avoid it. We can at least thank Disney for that service.

And to wrap this whole free comic part of the post up I will be busy with the new FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics Tomorrow and the complete list will be in the post that will go up as soon as possible so I can send the comics away until Christmas. For monetary reasons this contest is only open to german citizens except for Terry Hooper who I will send some german comics next week anyway. Send me an e - mail if you need any particular FREE COMIC BOOK DAY comics and I´ll see what I can do.

WHAT WAS THE NAME OF YOUR BLOG AGAIN ?

So there has not been much Superman related content lately on TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN which is something I intend to rectify. There is still the series about John Byrne´s run on SUPERMAN during the 80s which I have to continue ( we were just about to start on the SUPERMAN : EXILE issues ) and I have also plans to do posts on other great Superman artists from my youth like Kerry Gammill or the great Gil Kane. I remember when Gil Kane did some issues of Superman after decades of Curt Swan art.

Not to take anything away from Curt Swan ( who also did great work on the early issues of The Legion of Super - Heroes ) but Gil Kane just brought a fire and dynamism to the Superman books that was exciting.

Even in the small pocket books from Ehapa with almost no text I found these stories fascinating, especially his radical re - design of Brainiac 5 which is the look most of us Bronze Age kids are familiar with. There´s a hardcover out from DC with all that stuff ( ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN : GIL KANE ) and I will probably get that as a Christmas present if only to read all these stories with Brainiac 5 and the Forgotten Heroes in one volume without any issues or pages or any of the dialogue missing.

Am I old because I remember when Superman used to be a cool guy ?

WHO`S THAT BIKINI GIRL or ( PLEASE DO NOT ) RETOUCH MY BODY

So in my last post which was all about 80s POWER GIRL MARKIE POST I posted a picture of a well endowed bikini model with a very tiny white bikini. Now because the post was actually a re - post of my original post about CULT SIREN MARKIE POST I try to include some new stuff so that even readers who have already read the original post can get something out of the re - post while new readers might be enticed to check out the old post afterwards. It´s a win - win situation. My oold readers get new content and I get to post more pictures of hot bikini babes. So I did the same last year but because I could not find a better picture of a hot blonde in a bikini than the one I included last year - and because I had to wrap things up - I used a different picture from the same photoshoot.

But now that I have posted two pictures from the same bikini model two years in a row people are beginning to ask questions so I just want to use this opportunity to add two things : number one, that her name is Valerie Cormier, she was born on the 24th of December 1980, she´s a PLAYBOY and swimsuit model and her measurements are 36E ( !!! ) - 26 - 34.

The other thing I want to mention about bikini sexbomb Valerie Cormier is that while I was desperately looking for more pictures of the white bikini photo shoot I also found some pictures of the photo shoot above where two pictures in particular caught my eye. This is the first one.

Now this looks good to me. Okay, I´m a boobs man so my eyes are fixated on that part but to me it doesn´t look like there is anything that needs to changed or fixed. But apparently somebody else did not share my opinion.

And here I thought it´s the little imperfections that make us interesting. Yes, I know this doesn´t has anything to do with comics and I also know that pictures have been touched up in magazines for decades - especially since photoshop has been invented - but like Morpheus said to Neo : There´s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Time again to wrap things up for Today now that I have gotten rid of my last faithful readers with this rack attack. But not before the links of the day which include a review on the WITH GREAT POWER website on the first hardcover of Kurt Busiek and George Perez AVENGERS ASSEMBLE run for those who want to read an Avengers comic when they were cool, for more Gil Kane art from when Superman was cool go to this thread on the MARVEL MASTERWORKS FANSITE, HOW TO LOVE COMICS has a gallery of John Romita Jr in their Artist of the Week series and STEVE DOES COMICS has another top ten, this one John Romita Sr´s AMAZING SPIDER - MAN .

Speaking about MARVEL MASTERWORKS and John Romita Sr, one series that I will definitely continue is the MARVEL VISIONARY and that´s mainly because Disney doesn´t want my money. Or rather that I want to give my money to Disney but I can´t because they won´t let me. To explain this a little, as I mentioned earlier when I was rambling about the new header picture AVENGERS 81 is one of the Avengers issues with the most personal history behind it and as I also said repeatedly it´s one of the few issues for which I would pay the exorbitant prices the MARVEL MASTERWORKS demand. Which should make this an easy enough transaction because I want to spend money on this comic and Disney can´t get enough money. But here´s the catch : I can´t find this anywhere. No comic shop I know has it and because it seems to be out of print I would have to pay between 100 EUROS ( used ) and 1.750 ( used and new ) at amazon.

Now I know that since the first AVENGERS movie came out prices have been crazy but this is just ridiculous. Especially since the issues I want are split up between two different MARVEL MASTERWORK volumes.

So instead I opted for the much less expensive MARVEL VISIONARIES series once again ordering from the new and used section of amazon ( I really lucked out since all the volumes I got so far were in very good condition ) where I got the John Buscema volume for 33 EUROS, the Stan Lee volume for 23 EUROS, the Steve Ditko volume for 21 EUROS and the John Romita Sr volume for 17 EUROS. Keep in mind that these are all 30 dollar books except the John Buscema book which goes for 35 dollars.

And while AVENGERS 81 is not reprinted in any of the books they do contain some prime Avengers issues of John Buscema for a much lesser price than I would have paid for MARVEL MASTERWORK volume. And they also contain some stories I always wanted to read like Brother Take my Hand from DAREDEVIL 47 with beautiful artwork by Gene Colan or the IRON MAN issue by Steve Ditko in which Squirrel Girl defeats Doctor Doom but we will talk all about this - and more - in detail in upcoming posts.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention Today´s celebrity birthdays. The first one is Anne Hathaway who turns 33 and who oddly enough was in the last post of the SUBZERO EDITION OF CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE MOVIE ( there is still the alternatives post coming up but I guess it will be a while until I can finish that one ). I don´t have anything to add to that so just check out the post. I would wish her many happy returns but I´m still cross with her for her horrible performance as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. It will take more than a few wardrobe malfunctions to put that one right.

The other two are NCSI´s Cote De Pablo who turns 36 and Valerie Leon who played in the british Carry On series and Hammer movies like Blood From the Mummy´s Tomb and who celebrates her 72nd anniversary.

I briefly mentioned them in this post and while there´s nothing to add at the moment there will be a few posts about Hammer movies coming up.

And these are another reason why there have been no posts for so long. Like I mentioned in one of my earlier posts I finally started to watch the Hammer movies I got from the internet years ago during Halloween and after seeing them I wanted to write a few comments on them. So the first thing I did was to go on the internet and look for some pictures but as always I couldn´t find the specific pictures I was looking for. Thankfully I can now make screenshots of movies so that I could at least make the necessary pictures myself. But anyone who has seen more than two Hammer movies knows that one of the staples of the movies are very attractive actresses and I soon realized that it would be a great disservice to my readers if I didn´t present said massitas in the best way possible.

Which of course meant making some animated GIFs. The good thing about that is that I could cut the pictures so that the focus was on the actresses. The bad thing is that it takes forever to do these things especially with the hot Yvonne Romain in The Curse of the Werewolf with Oliver Reed. She´s one of the highlights of the movie and her scenes alone are worth the price of admission. So while her GIFs took the longest to make and are the biggest I ever made ( over 47 MB ) and it prevented me from posting for more than two days I think it was totally worth it.

From Hammer horror movies to other black and white classics here is another slapstick comedy series from my youth, VÄTER DER KLAMOTTE ( which could be translated as something like Fathers of Comedy ) once again narrated by Hans Dieter Hüsch. This episode presents An Apple in his Eye from 1941 with Edgar Kennedy, Vivian Oakland and Charlie Hall.



I still have a lot of horror and Halloween related videos left but while I can post most of them later I should not wait too long with this documentary.



Since this post is not about anything in particular I can resolve one of the great mysteries that have plagued comic fans all over the world : what is this " la massita de behaviour " music they always play on the show ?



I only mentioned Squirrel Girl briefly but because I doubt that there is another chance to post a video related to her with the quality of her current series here is BelleChere cosplaying her bushy tail off, aw yeah.



This is my second video from a casting show and because my last one was with a girl I wanted to go with a guy this time. Originally I wanted to go with somebody who surprised the judges but I had to go with this video of Dave Vermeulen with They Call Me The Breeze because he just rocks.



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