Too many birthdays not enough Sal Velluto

There are just too many birthdays for me to keep up. Just Today we have Herb Trimpe ( I still couldn´t bring myself to do a post on him ), Peter Cushing and Pam Grier and I´d like to do posts on all of them but after doing three posts back to back with little or almost no sleep I´m instead doing a short post on Sal Velluto who had his 60th birthday Yesterday.

Well, what I call a short post. I would have done this Yesterday but I was still working on the post about cult siren Sybil Danning which turned out to be more time consuming than I thought. In fact it was so time consuming that I totally blanked on the fact that the International Comic Salon in Erlangen starts Today. I wanted to go to the bank but after sitting at the bus stop for half and hour I remembered that the first day of Erlangen is on Fronleichnam or like we used to call it in school Happy Cadaver Day.

So I don´t know if I can finish this Today because I had absolutely no sleep this night but IF I manage to wrap this up I will be in a deep coma for the rest of the week. Bach to Sal Velluto I´m going to do a quick run down of the books he worked on with a few choice bonmots by yours truly. JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE was more my brother´s series than mine but I got issues 5 and 6. It was a KNIGHTQUEST tie - in and I read all bat - titles.

If I had also gotten the following two issues I would have spared myself a lot of time and troubles because it took me years to track down the famous two part story in which J´onn J´onnz becomes a woman.

Not that DC really dared to go into interesting territory there. But one of the things I appreciate about Sal Velluto is the way he draws women.

Sadly I don´t have the cover of issue 20 with Gypsy in better quality but here´s some original JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE art by Sal Velluto.

Next up is FIREBRAND of which I only have two issues from the dollar bin so I can´t say if the series is any good. Sal´s art however is impeccable.

On the other hand I DO own all issues of RESURRECTION MAN which has my highest recommendation. So I also have the issue with art by Sal.

Now I´m not so sure if I have any of his BLOODSHOT issues. I was avoiding all Valiant series Acclaim published after reading the horrendous X - O MANOWAR issues like the devil avoids holy water. They took the original concept of having a character like Conan wear a suit of armor much more sophisticated than the Iron Mam armor and replaced it with a computer geek wearing an armor made for special marines. Which is the plot of every other bad low budget movie or tv show. So except for the immensly brilliant QUANTUM & WOODY by Christopher Priest ( we will return to him later on ) I was staying away from Acclaim books but Sal Velluto´s awesome art might have persuaded me to make an exception.

Since I was reading FLASH when this came out I probably have this annual in my Flash collection even if Sal only did the cover while Phillip Hester did provide the artwork on the interior pages. BLOODLINES was one of the worst annual themes and I think the only character that was introduced in these annuals that had any kind of long term staying power was HITMAN.

So I´m pretty sure I don´t have this one since I had already quit JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL. This has interior art by the late Mike Parobeck.

Now I do have some issues from this volume of MARC SPECTOR : MOON KNIGHT - even this very issue - but I never realized he drew these. His art looked quite different back then. Is he fighting the Black Panther ?

Now the two issue mini series SILVER SURFER - LOFTIER THAN MORTALS has managed to dodge my radar completely ( no pun intended ) as I have never heard about it. Maybe somebody out there knows if it´s any good ?

Yep, I still haven´t any THE PHANTOM issues by Sal Velluto. At least there has been one trade announced that contains the stories written by Mark Waid but why are they sitting on these issues ? It´s like printing money.  

Say what ? There is a female Phantom ? You mean the Phantom with boobs - and guns - who kicks ass ? Why is that not a series that anybody can buy ? What goes on in those twisted and deranged minds of comic publishers ?

Hell, yeah ! BLACK PANTHER, Christopher Priest, STORM, Sal Velluto - that´s what I´m talking about ! You don´t have Christopher Priest´s fantastic BLACK PANTHER run without Sal Velluto. I mean don´t get me wrong, Mark Texiera who did the first first four issues followed by Joe Jusko, Mike Manley and Mark D. Bright they were laying the groundwork.

But Sal Velluto comes in with issue 13 and he sticks with the title for the next two and a half years, doing double sized issues .... he just brings it.

He gave the book a consistency and a unified look doing all the crazy Wakanda technology and Black Panther with all those muscles. And let´s not forget Storm looking real sexy, more on a Halle Berry level stuff. 

The only thing I didn´t like about the whole T´Challa / Strom marriage thing is that Marvel didn´t have enough faith in their already existing continuity. Like the past that the characters had was not good enough or they were afraid the new comic readers ( yep, always the elusive new comic readers everybody chases after but very few have actually seen ) could not be bothered to read back issues because they are like old and stuff. And they have all this confusing things like storytelling and caption boxes and thought balloons. No, the past between them had to be enforced with a new mini series so Marvel could feel more at ease.

And that´s all I have to say about Sal Velluto. Well, maybe not but I want to go to sleep now. I have found two more series by Sal Velluto but I have honestly never heard of them. The first one sounds like one of those steampunk guys that are so popular now. The other one .... meh !

There are a few more birthdays to cover. First up is Bobcat Goldthwait who turns 54 and he is best known for appearing in such classic comedies like Police Academy 4 - Citizens On Patrol. The best known scene from the movie is Leslie Easterbrook emerging from a pool in a wet t - shirt.

Speaking about movie sexbombs pop culture icon and blaxploitaion star Pam Grier - who was the inspiration for the secret identity of the Avenger´s Tigra - has her 67th anniversary. She appeared in a whole plethora of cult movies where she displayed her stunning physique and I was thinking about doing a Foxy Brown / Coffy double feature since I bought both movies recently but haven´t had the time to watch them yet.

Next up is singer Stevie Nicks, who started in one of my favorite bands Fleetwood Mac also celebrates her birthday, she turns 68 years old.



I still haven´t done a post on Herb Trimpe who would have celebrated another birthday Today. He did a ton of stuff at Marvel but he is best known for his years working on The Incredible Hulk where Adam Warlock regenerated and I liked his art best when Marie Severin was inking him.

Today would also have been Horst Tappert´s anniversary but I just posted a Derrick video in the post about cult siren Sybil Danning and I don´t want to repeat myself so soon. So I can just give a tip of my hat to old Horst.

It is also Peter Cushing´s birthday and I wrote about him in my post on cult siren Hazel Court and The Curse Of Frankenstein. I would have liked to continue my series about the british Hammer movies but the next two moives where I have all the material prepared are The Horror Of Frankenstein and The Scars Of Dracula, none of them with Peter Cushing.

Our last birthday is The Duke himself, John Wayne. My Dad was a huge western fan so there were a lot of his movies on the telly in our house most often Rio Bravo and El Dorado. In fact I have seen them so many times that I always confuse the two. I thought about adding a video of one of John Wayne´s westerns but the videos on YouTube all have a bad quality. If you still want to watch them you can easily find enough from him but I think it would be better for the eyes if you can watch it on tv.

Also this way I get to add another comic related video to the post like this one about Sal Velluto´s ( and also Peter David´s ) work on The Phantom.



One of the series Sal Velluto has worked on is Black Panther. The Marvel super hero. In Spain and Latin America there was another Black Panther.



Today is the start of the International Comic Salon in Erlangen so I thought what would be most helpful ? There are a lot of videos about Germany on YouTube but this one gives you the vital informations.



Now if you have made it thus far I want to reward your tenacity with K9 And Company, a Doctor Who spin - off that never got greenlighted.



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