Saturday, September 24, 2016

Splash page Saturday with Savage Dragon

It´s been a while since I did a post about THE best superhero series out there and since I really haven´t that much to add to what I said in my last post I thought I´d just take a page out of fellow blog BOB MITCHELL IN THE 21ST CENTURY ( who´s back to posting after a two year absence, welcome back pal, we missed you ) and showcase some of Erik Larsen´s mindblowing splash pages which he just seems to churn out effortlessly.


There are many reasons to use splash pages, the most common to grab the reader´s attention from the first pages and in fact for decades comics solely used the splash page on the first page as the introduction to all the wacky mayhem that was to unfold during the process of the story within. 


Of course over time comic book artists began to use splash pages for other purposes like giving special gravitas to poignant moments in an issue.


Or sometimes they were used to give readers all the necessary exposition.


It can also be used to break up the flow of the story with comedic relief.


Or the Marvel - patented punching action shot ( there will be an upcoming post with just people punching other people hard in the near future ).


Anyway, there are a hundred different reasons to use a splash page but I don´t want to bore you by listing them all. Instead I´m going to let the master speak for himself because every time Erik Larsen uses a splash page he does so masterfully. You can tell the quality of a series by its use of splash pages so here are some of the best from his 200 plus issue run.


Today´s first celebrity birthday is the best reason to watch Gracepoint even if you have already seen the original british version Broadchurch, Jessica Lucas who turns 31. And she turns so nicely ( pun intended ).


Besides Gracepoint you might have seen her in Seven Days, Psych or Gotham. As always I went to the internet to get more information about her but as always there are contradictory facts especially where her breast size is concerned which goes from 32B to 34C to even 37C. As somebody who is more accustomed to measurements in centimeters those are only abstract numbers anyway and I´d say Jessica is just right as she is. Daimn !


Now I first saw Jessica Lucas on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and even though most of her booming body is covered up she´s just oozing hotness. I couldn´t find the bookmark I had made for this so I might have already posted her appearance on that show but I surely didn´t post the full show. In any case it´s better to be safe than sorry.



Speaking of incredible bodies April Hunter celebrates her 45th birthday and I´m pretty sure her 40E bust is accurate as plenty of pictures verify that. I first saw April on glamour websites like FOXES which were one of the first where you could see hot models on the internet and then as one of the girls in the Ironman Swimsuit Spectacular 5 alongside Linda O´Neil, Cori Nadine, LeAnna Scott and fellow NWO valet Tylene Buck ( who are all featured in the special wrestling edition of my casting the JLA movie ).   


So you might have seen April on wrestling shows since she was one of the hot sexbombs that always accompanied the NWO guys to the ring ( and which often got sent back to the locker room by Jeff Jarrett, much to the chagrin of all guys present and at home ) but like Tylene Buck who adopted the Major Gunns persona April soon got bored with just being eye candy and worked her way through Killer Kowalski´s wrestling school. Besides acting in movies she has become one of the top wrestlers in the independent circuit in the US but also in Europe, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan and Canada. She has also appeared on Carmen Electra´s NWWL working matches in the nude which I honestly have never heard of.  

Originally I wanted to post a video with Big Poppa Steiner since April was one of his freaks together with Tylene Buck, Pamela Paulschock, Midajah O´Hearn and Kim Kenner but the quality is not that good and worst of all April is not in it. There are many other videos on YouTube of her wrestling other women but I wanted to post something else. I found some videos of her cosplaying such obscure characters like Thundra from the Fantastic Four ( well, obscure to Today´s comic reading audience ) but as a redhead and with her stunning figure Jessica Rabbit is just the obvious choice.



April Hunter wrestled in Canada - Marc Guggenheim who turns 46 wrestled with writing comics most famous Canadian mutant in one of the best Wolverine stories I ever read coming out of Civil War ( the real one ). Marc is also one of the writers on Legends Of Tomorrow and Arrow, whose next seasons start in October alongside Supergirl and The Flash. Besides the Wolverine story Marc has also done stints on Aquaman, the Flash run that ends with the death of Impulse, twelve issues of Blade with art by Howard Chaykin and he was one of the rotating writers on Amazing Spider - Man. Coming back to Marvel´s war books, he also wrote the Squadron Sinister mini series that was - like always - masterfully drawn by Carlos Pacheco.


It´s without any doubt one of the few good things to come out of Disney destroying over forty years of continuity for a quick buck and you can enjoy the series without any previous knowledge. Now if Disney would only manage to pull this off in the overpriced political correct monthlies. 
 
Now one of the better known Marvel characters is Avengers member Hercules and he was most prominently portrayed on television by Kevin Sorbo who celebrates his 58th birthday. Although the Hercules he played in The Legendary Journeys Of Hercules didn´t have much in common with the Hercules we know from the comics or the greek mythology. The only reason for me to watch the show were the hot women like Cory Everson.


Now I would love to go into a tangent about the Hercules tv show, Xena, Kevin Sorbo´s really bad King Kull adaption or the sci fi show Andromeda but that is really the topic for a separate post. What I want to mention is that I kind of reconciled with Kevin Sorbo after seeing an interview where he said he never considered to have the body to adequately play Hercules but if all the people around think so and they are willing to give him a lot of money who is he to say no to them ? A mans gotta eat. Right now the seasons of Hercules are around ten bucks and I have toyed with getting the three seasons Cory Everson appears in. I´ll have to put her entry in the Search For Power Girl series ( which was a special reader request ) on the blog as soon as I have had time to make a few more animated GIFs.


There are no episodes of The Legendary Journeys in good quality ( and especially no clips with Cory Everson from that show ) and I won´t post anything from King Kull or Andromeda. I already posted two Hercules movies in previous post but luckily I found a cartoon show from the beginnings of time. Or at least the beginnings of animation it seems.



On Thursday we had the anniversary of Hans Albers who played a character from Hamburg´s red light district in Große Freiheit Nr 7, Today Heinz Hönig turns 65 who - besides starring in SOKO, Tatort, Das Boot, 7 Zwerge - Männer allein in Wald ( The 7 Dwarves - Men Alone In The Forrest ) and 7 Zwerge - Der Wald ist nicht genug ( The 7 Dwarves - The Forrest Is Not Enough ) - starred in Der König von St. Pauli ( The King Of St. Pauli ) which also takes place around the Reeperbahn. The six part SAT1 series was the forerunner of Die rote Meile which I already mentioned in an earlier post .


Also born on this day was Howard Hughes who is best known for his groundbreaking works in avionics and cinema. And for going completely bananas after becoming rich. His movie The Outlaw was Jane Russell´s big breakthrough and she starred in 5 more movies he produced : Underwater, Macao, The Las Vegas Story, His Kind Of Woman and The French Line.


With such legendary figure of history it´s difficult to discern what is fact and what is fiction but despite the official canon I think he must have tapped that. I mean, how could he not ? Anyway, there´s a funny skit about those two from Saturday Night Live where Dan Aykroyd plays Howard Hughes and Raquel Welch plays Jane Russell ( a role she fills out perfectly ) but I will leave that for the next birthday of one of them. And since I already posted the title song from The French Line in an earlier post here is Jane Russell with Ain´t There Anyone Here For Love ? 



Also no longer with us is famous puppet master Jim Henson, creator of such shows for younger viewers like The Muppets and The Fraggles who also produced The Dark Cristal and Labyrinth with Jennifer Conelly.


I thought I had more videos from The Muppets left but either I can´t find them right now or I already posted them or they are already deleted.



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