Never trust the internet or computers. I´m not sure how it happened - apparently the new post I was working on was copied over the draft version - which I didn´t know was possible. How come this never happens in a positive way ? Anyway, this time we will talk about Neal Adams´ comics at Marvel which are not as many as at DC but no less iconic.
To tell the truth, when he started working on X - Men with writer Roy Thomas the title was on the verge of cancellation and while the end could only be prolonged without his stint on X - Men there probably would not have been an interest in creating the all new all different X - Men.
At least there would not have been a Professor X which is one of the characters the creative team revived. Starting with issue 56 Adams penciled, colored and did most of the plotting and as usually when a creative team is given carte blanche on a title the book that had only consisted of reprints so far became a favorite of fans and critics.
Neal Adams and Roy Thomas went on to AVENGERS where they started their short but memorable run with a real bang as the seemingly indestructible Vision crashes into the assembly hall where he collapses.
Which brings us to one of the greatest double page spreads in the entire history of Marvel Comics. You have to open the picture below in a new window to really appreciate all the detail Neal Adams put into the pages.
What followed was Neal´s version of the Raquel Welch vehicle Fantastic Voyage with visuals that still hold up to Today´s computer coloring. And he did it all with glued on zip - a - tone and a limitless imagination.
But that was only the prologue because when the Vision is finally revived the other shoe drops in what became a prelude for without any question Marvel´s artistic highlight of that era The Kree / Skrull War. Now I´m no executive guy from Disney but I would put that into an ARTISTS EDITION.
Neal Adams also got to revisit the Inhumans with this splash page that has engraved itself into my teenage mind and which is just one of the reasons that I bought the spanish edition although I had already read all the issues. There are probably a number of trades out there that include the story but the reason why I went and got the spanish edition is that it is in the oversized album format and was printed on thick glossy paper.
But the greatest thing the story brought us was Avengers in space and who could ever forget Hawkeye´s heroic sacrifice ? Part of the story was drawn by John Buscema and if it didn´t exceed the size of this post I would have included more pages. Maybe one of these days I can do another black and white Sunday post on the Kree / Skrull War.
I always have to laugh when new comic readers encounter the Kree / Skrull War for the first time and are perplexed how short it is compared to Today´s endless and totally overhyped storylines without meaning or substance. They didn´t need more than five issues to bring us such classic moments like the Vision going nuts over Wanda for the first time. I read all those issues in the german version by Williams and I found a few scans of that but let´s just say the reproduction was not very good.
Usually I don´t go for variant covers but I had to purchase the recreation of an iconic Avengers cover by my other favorite comic artist whose last name is Adams. I got it on my last visit to the International Comic Salon in Erlangen in 2014 and since I couldn´t go this year due to health problems maybe I can finally find the time to finish my travel report from that year. I´m sure the notes I made are still on my desk somewhere.
Neal Adams also did his part of fleshing out the history of everybody´s favorite cimmerian sword for hire on CONAN and the black and white SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN magazine although he only did one issue.
Further Marvel work I can only mention shortly is DRACULA LIVES 2, EPIC ILLUSTRATED 7, the five part FIRST X - MEN mini series, NEW AVENGERS 16.1, THOR 180 and 181, TOWER OF SHADOWS 2 and part of the YOUNG AVENGERS SPECIAL 1. Is it just me or has the last one become a giant crapfest that even managed to offend homosexual people under Disney ?
Today we have a rather long entertainment section so we go right into the acknowledgements and first kudos go out once again to the PENCIL INK COMIC BOOK ARTIST BLOG for providing the second page from Avengers 93 and the double page spread from that issue comes courtesy of Paul O´Connor´s post on the Kree / Skrull War at the LONGBOX GRAVEYARD .
In their A Year Of Cool Comic Book Moments the guys from COMIC BOOK RESOURCES have a post on Avengers 93 in two parts , THE PERIODIC FABLE takes a look at the technique of multi panel pans that includes a page from Avengers 93 and our trusty pal Old Groove at DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND offers Neal Adams´ Tarzan trade paperback covers .
It´s strange how things work out. I did the first Neal Adams post on Zoe Saldana´s birthday and Today I´m doing the next Neal Adams post and it´s the 37th birthday of Chris Pratt her co star on Guardians Of The Galaxy. He also was on Jurassic World which I haven´t seen yet and I guess he´s going to be in the next Guardians and Avengers movies when Thanos comes to earth. Is it asking too much to see him in the original Star Lord uniform ? It´s weird for Star Lord to wear Grifter´s old clothes.
Erica Durance ( called En - Durance Test by her boyfriends - guess why ) turns 38 and she played Lois Lane on Smallville. Now that they have put former Superman Dean Cain and former Supergirl Helen Slater into the new Supergirl series maybe they can bring Erica and Tom Welling on the show. The next season is going to be at the CW and since they already introduced the multiverse maybe they could be from another earth.
The next birthday is something for my german readers as they might be more familiar with Dorkas Kiefer. With 44 the buxom blonde has already done everything from singing ( so far she has recorded six singles ) to representing Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994 to acting in theatre, movies and on tv in serious roles as well as in comedies but most importantly getting naked for the german edition of PLAYBOY magazine.
A directly comic related date is Steve Niles´ 51st anniversary. His claim to fame is writing 30 Days Of Night ( which I haven´t read because I´m not a big fan of Ty Templeton´s art ), Criminal Macabre ( which I HAVE read since it was in some issues of Dark Horse Presents but it did not impress me much ) and a Bigfoot mini illustrated by the great Richard Corben.
Another weird coincidence is that in the other Neal Adams post I did mention the 1980s movie Teen Wolf and Today Doug Savant turns 52. He played Brad in that movie. That alone would not be mentioning but while the name didn´t sound familiar I sure recognized the face since he was also Tom Scavo on the hit series Desperate Housewives with Teri Hatcher.
Teri played Lois Lane on Lois & Clark The New Adventures Of Superman and like Erica she was daimn hot. So far the new television incarnations of Lois Lane have been grade a centerfold material and I wonder if they are going to continue the tradition by picking another über sexbomb.
With all the movie, tv and cartoon adaptions it´s interesting to know that there was a short time when Superman was actually in the public domain.
Gosho Aoyama has his 53rd birthday and he is the creative genius of Meitantei Konan or Case Closed how Detektiv Conan how the manga is called in America. Since we just had a Sherlock Holmes related video a few days ago and I already posted on of the real live movies ( which was probably deleted in the meantime ) I´m skipping this one. At the moment I´m taking a more or less involuntary break because I always forget to write down which was my last issue before I go to Ludwigsburg or Stuttgart. Nevertheless it´s one of the few mangas I´m still reading.
Rachel McLish who turns 61 was not only the first Ms. Olympia she also has her own entry in my series of CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE MOVIE.
I was not going to put 75 year old Lyman Ward on the post until I saw that he was on the 80s teen comedy Ferris Buellers Day Off which I mentioned in the first Neal Adams post and on the exploitation classic Coffy with Pam Grier who also has been in the entertainment section not long ago.
He also was on episodes of such cult shows like Man From Atlantis, the original Battlestar Galactica, Remington Steele, Hart to Hart, Dallas, the pilot episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Night Court with 80s cult siren Markie Post. She was pretty much covered up during the whole series except for one episode where she made up for the lack of boob by wearing a cleavage of Power Girl´s magical boob window like dimensions.
She dressed more casually on The Fall Guy where she stole the scene from Heather Thomas whenever she strut her 36C - 24 - 36 bod in a bikini.
Lyman put also appearances in A - Team, Magnum P.I., Matlock, Dave´s World and Weird Science which is the title of a classic EC comic book series, an unrealistic movie with Kelly Le Brock ( okay, in the real world they would bang her instead of looking to score with some bland teenage girls while the part where she doesn´t want to do it with them and is more interested in having sex with the jocks that bully them is taken right from real life ) and an entertaining tv series with Vanessa Angel.
More degrees of separation : Lyman Ward was on Silk Stalkings with Mitzi Kapture who was on Baywatch and Angel III : The Final Chapter. Debbe Dunning guest starred in two episode of Silk Stalkings as two different characters and she was also on Baywatch ( I told you, David Hasselhoff snatched up all the available sexbombs for that show ) and became the tooltime girl on Home Improvement after Pamela Anderson had left for greener pastures. Pam is always portrayed as a dumb blonde but she and Debbe Dunning had the same starting conditions ( a certain degree of fame due to exposure on shows like Baywatch and Home Improvement and a body that could cause the number of sold copies of any men´s magazine to skyrocket ) Pamela made a successful career out of it while Debbe´s highlight is a Jessica Rabbit like character in Misery Brothers.
Another one of the main actresses on Silk Stalkings was Janet Gun who before had been in the tv show Dark Justice which was a poor man´s version of Daredevil. I have been looking forever and a day for the first episode with her because she was looking extremely hot in that one.
More tv series with Lyman I wantd to mention are Murder She Wrote, Black Scorpion with Joan Severance ( have to make a post about that sometime ), Monk ( Traylor Howard who plays Natalie Teeger just had her 50th birthday last Wednesday ) and J.A.G. with Catherine Bell whom I cast as Catwoman in another CASTING THE JUSTICE LEAGUE MOVIE posts .
Lyman Ward´s further movies also include A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 : Freddy´s Revenge, Sleepwalkers, , Independence Day and The Beverly Hillbillies with Ernest P Worrell actor Jim Varney and Erika Eleniak who also was on Baywatch and had her most memorable scene in Under Siege. Again, Erika is not less talent as an actress than Pamela Anderson and she also has the pornstar body and stripper qualities to be a big star but she ended up in small pictures while Pam became a worldwide phenomenon.
Okay, what all this litany of hot massitas leads to ( besides being reason to post some hot GIFs by itself ) is another video with Heather Thomas from The Fall Guy. And any excuse to put more Elvira on the blog is okay with me. I really have to re - watch Elvira´s Haunted Hills one of these days because I´m not sure why I don´t like it as much as the first movie.
Anyway, just the other day I watched the Fall Guy episode with Elvira - or so I thought. Apparently there are two episodes and I had only seen the first one on german tv which was why the other one seemed so unfamiliar to me. Since only the first two seasons are available on DVD in Germany here is the first of the Elvira episodes for my german viewers. Watch out for the scene where Jodi Banks has to double Elvira as she is wearing her costume and Heather Thomas boobs look even bigger than Elvira´s.
Since I only post one music video per post ( otherwise it can get a bit boring ) I have to skip the birthdays of Manu Chao ( 55 ) and Nils Lofgren ( 65 ) in favor of Lalo Schifrin who celebrates 84 years. And that is because he has laid the musical foundation for such classic tv series and films like The Man From U.N.C.L.E. , Mission : Impossible, Planet Of The Apes, Mannix, Petrocelli, Bronk, Starsky And Hutch, Bullit with Steve McQueen and The Cincinnati Kid and Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman ( I always get Steve McQueen and Paul Newman mixed up for some reason ) and the unforgettable car wash scene with blonde temptation Joy Harmon .
Today´s kids know him from the Rush Hour movies, naturally the new Mission : Impossible movies and maybe even The Liquidator, Coogan´s Bluff, Three Days Of The Condor, The Last Dragon or Enter The Dragon.
Today are also the birthdays of french philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer and literary critic Jean Paul Sartre and of cinema cult siren Jane Russell and I leave it to my readers to decide who has done more for peace in the world and the betterment of mankind.
Even with all the posts I´m doing and an ever expanding entertainment section I an´t possibly cover all comic birthday so I selected the Torpedo video based on the comic series by Sanchet Abuli and Jordi Bernet - who celebrated his 72nd cumpleano last Tuesday - as Today´s cartoon video.
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