Of course I did not forsake my plans right away. I was perfectly happy to just mention Jack Davis in the birthday section since I was all geared up for the Flash / Arrow / Legends of Tomorrow / Supergirl crossover so a FLASH FRIDAY post with Paul Ryan´s next issue was right up my alley.
I had downloaded all of the crossover episodes, I had stocked up on the three important food groups to survive binge watching this epic event : potato chips, pop corn and ice cream, I only had to watch one episode of Arrow to get up to speed and start having fun. I had already watched the latest episode of Supergirl where Barry and Cisco Ramon cross over to Kara´s universe so I was all hyped up. The only thing left to do was start the FLASH FRIDAY post. But like always with the best plans of mice and men when I went through my EC Comics folder I found that I had the complete original art for a story by Jack Davis. So I thought : why not go and see if I can find those in color ? Well, I did and this being a seven page story I had now fourteen pages which is a bit too long to add it to a FLASH FRIDAY post. Then I found five more original pages from a Jack Davis story and the color pages for that too. Which settled it. For a quick moment I thought about doing both posts Today but as experience has taught us that would have meant working on those posts for the next few days.
So here are The Black Ferris, written by Ray Bradbury from The Haunt Of Fear 18 and Coffin Spell from The Vault Of Horror 38. I don´t know where I found the original art for the first story but the art from the second story comes from Heritage Auctions which means that the lot is still up for auction. As for the color pages you can find The Black Ferris - as well as a guide to Ray Bradbury EC Comics stories - on MARS WILL SEND NO MORE .
So the blog statistics say that this is my 790th post which means post 800 is just ten posts away. I have been going over a lot of older posts and it´s fascinating how the posts have evolved over the years. As somebody who often gets so immersed in his work that he can loose sight of things I have to ask my readers what they think about where this blog is going ? Do you like that the post frequency has increased or do you want to go back to the posts where I talk more about things ? How about the babe factor ? Is it still okay with all the massitas I mention and the cult siren posts - which admittedly often go to the limit of what would be considered to be safe for work - or should I dial it down a notch ? And for my newer readers : how do you feel about the difference between old posts and new posts ? If you DO read them old posts at all. Okay, I´m totally stealing somebody else´s catchphrase here but please let me know in the comments below.
Speaking of posts, don´t expect a new post before Monday since I will be busy cleaning up the laptop again as a lot of junk has accumulated with the research for all the latest posts. And if I want to do any posts on the future I have to get rid of all the unnecessary clutter. So let´s head right to Today´s celebrity birthday section as Daniela Ruah turns 33. The exotic actress with jewish, ukrainian, russian and portugese roots who started out in portugese telenovelas is best known as Special Agent Kensi Blye on NCIS Los Angeles where she is the only interesting character after Deeks.
Speaking of interesting characters, former teen pop sensation Britney Spears celebrates her 35th birthday and she provided plenty of material for the tabloids. Thankfully she has left her scandals behind her ( at least I hope she has since I´m not really following the yellow press ) but I don´t think she will ever reclaim the cult status she once had. Do you remember when she shot a whole generation of little kids into puberty prematurely through her performance of Hit Me Baby One More Time at the 1999 Kid´s Choice Awards with her hard nipples visible through a thin white top ?
Or when she made all men crazy with her stripper skills at the 2000 Video Music Awards, a performance that was only topped the next year with her hyper sexed up I´m A Slave For You belly dance. That song alone provided generations of guys with wank material no matter if it was through the video or her live performances like during the concert in Las Vegas in 2002.
I remember buying the DVD and being astonished that the FSK rated it as 6 years and up but I definitely got my money´s worth with the up part !
We are staying with princesses ( of pop and other things ) and though there are some similarities between Britney Spears and german singer / actress Yvonne Catterfeld - who turns 37 - I bet she is happy that she did not have such big scandals in her life. Yvonne started her career through a singing competition and gained fame through the daily soap Gute Zeiten Schlechte Zeiten ( Good Times Bad Times ) which is Germany´s best known soap and also it´s worst. With numerous awards under her belt and over 800,000 sold records she is one of the best - selling german music artists of all time and she has been a coach on The Voice Of Germany. Yvonne also did some voice acting and as an accomplished actress has appeared in numerous international films like Beauty And The Beast from 2014 which not only got rave reviews but also has some nude scenes with Yvonne.
If you have read my latest posts you know why I´m not doing a post in honor of Frank Cho´s 45 birthday Today. After all the crap he had to take from other publishers - especially beause the women he draws are too sexy whatever that may be - you might expect that when he finally gets the chance to cut loose without any limits he tries to kick it in the back and do a series to give catholic priests a reason to turn straight, the big comic publishers a panic attack that they ever let him go and the most hardcore otakus severe nosebleeds. Instead his new series Skybourne makes his issues for The Totally Awesome Hulk look like opera and his issues with the Red Hulk and the Women Liberators like hardcore porn in comparison. I bought the first two issues because I wanted to support him but if he sets himself up to failure because he ignores his strengths I can not help him. The comic industry has enough creators on ego trips as it is.
I don´t like to be so negative which is the reason why I almost did pass Lucy Liu who turns 48. Don´t get me wrong, she´s a great actress and the only reason why she is not in any of my casting calls for the Justice League of America movie is that I did not want to go with the obvious choice.
Because ever time those Hollywood guys have to cast an asian woman the first name they come up with is Lucy Liu. And while that has worked out in Kill Bill, Ballistic : Ecks vs Sever and Kung Fu Panda it also produced such career killers like Charlie´s Angels produced by the Wicked Witch Of The West and Elementary. You know, the BAD new tv show about Sherlock Holmes. Now because of the german tv schedule I´ve watched a few more episodes of the show and I have to say it´s not that bad IF you can ignore that it has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes besides the names of the characters, the fact that the main character´s hair always looks like a baby bird that has fallen out of his nest and that he is not half as intelligent as you assume somebody taking up the mantle of Sherlock Holmes to be. Like I said, it is an enjoyable show once you can muster an immense amount of suspension of disbelief so I went looking for some animated GIFs of Lucy Liu from that show but in the end I could not really find a good one and opted for a picture instead. Nevertheless if you are looking for something along those lines you can find over 270 GIFs from that show on ASTRID HELPS but be sure to pack a lunch because the page takes a while to load.
Finally we have a video ! Okay, actually two. Most of the time I put things on the posts that interest me and let the readers be hanged but Today I´m also trying to make up for not having done a post on Halloween. We have two playmates next which means that I can´t put their videos on the blog - because nudity - and since I couldn´t find a video of Daniela Ruah on The Late Late Show here is one with Lucy Liu in an orange dress.
I know that I could only watch the show through the internet but now that it´s gone it makes me sad. I´m posting two videos but I count them as one. There is one that only has Lucy Liu´s part - because I know that´s all some people might want to see - and for the rest here is the full show.
Speaking of playmates, you might have noticed that I don´t mention all playmate birthdays. I only write about the ones I remember which are mostly from the 80s to 2000 - which is the time frame when I was a semi regular reader and Renee Tenison is among the more memorable ones.
Not only because the Playmate Of The Month in November 1989 who celebrates her 48th birthday became the first Playmate Of The Year of afro - american descend in 1990 but also because the 36D sexbomb has one of the best bodies to ever grace the pages of that magazine. Sadly I can´t post her best pictures but I did find a good one with her twin sister Rosie, who for some reason was still working in a normal job when Renee already had become Playmate of the Year. Thankfully she realized one day that she looks exactly like her sister and tried her hand at modeling posing together for PLAYBOY and appearing in some of their Sexy Sisters videos.
Another quintessential 80s playmate is Sharry Konopski who turns 49. She was chosen as Playmate Of The Month in August 1987 and is known for her exceptional beauty and possibly the best breasts in all of PLAYBOY history. She also is into a lot of stuff I like, pizza and hot rods, and from what I could read online she is a straightforward real person who calls it like it is.
Sadly she was injured in a car accident in 1995 which left her permanently paraplegic ( paralyzed from the waist down ). From her website: " I wrecked my car and had to be airlifted to Emanuel Hospital in Portland, OR. For six weeks, I had a sucking chest wound and my right lung collapsed and the t - 9 and t - 11 vertebrate had burst fractures in my spine with massive bruising to my spinal cord leaving me paralyzed from the waist down. I am not able to keep the muscles tight enough to stand or walk but I do have sensory. So, I can feel for the most part, thank God ! "
This did not stop her from posing for PLAYBOY again in March 1997 though and she still looked amazing. Sharry continues to model, and appears in videos geared towards " devotees " of paraplegics and amputees.
Our last birthday salute goes to the best known opera diva of all time, the divine Maria Callas. Which I normally would not mention since I am not that well versed on the subject but I found a video of Monica Naranjo on Tu Cara Me Suena ( in spanish you say your face sounds familiar not looks familiar - I know, it does not really make sense but which language does ? ) where she pays homage to one of her biggest idols. I haven´t posted a video of Monica Naranjo yet because I am still hoping against hope I can find her live performance of Desatame from the gala show A Galicia Gente Va where her breasts almost spilled out of a red wonderbra. I have it on some of my old videocassettes but so far I could not find it on YouTube.
As this post would have fit perfectly on Halloween I have not put that many videos with the birthdays so I can add a few I would have put in a Halloween post beginning with Comicbookgirl19´s Halloween Special 4 ( if you haven´t seen the first three Halloween specials go back and watch them most importantly the one about House II ! ) about The Exorcist III and Death Becomes Her. The last one had the best special effects of its time and I have to say in the video Comicbookgirl19 does have some very effective special effects herself which distracted me quite a few times.
What can I say ? I´m a guy and I notice these things. The reason why I chose this video - beside the one for which I have to apologize - is that Death Becomes Her is like one of the classic EC comic stories. And if you want to watch another movie that has stepped right out of the pages of one of the old EC horror mags I recommend The Grave ( german title Die Gruft in den Sümpfen ) from 1996. Two convicts hear the story of a rich guy who took all his loot with him and decide to break out and plunder his crypt. But one of the cons gets shot during the escape and the other has to throw in with a not so bright former acquaintance and his scheming wife. Nobody can trust the other in this trio infernale and the movie is full of unexpected twists and morbid humor as well as a brilliant bluegrass soundtrack. The right movie for afficionados of hard boiled horror flicks.
I also wanted to include a video with Jack Davis´ art and this has the best quality. Plus it is an audio drama so you can concentrate on the pictures.
This documentary about EC Comics is actually a re - post but because I´m not sure if the video I posted is still on the post and Jack Davis is in it - here it is again. The quality of the picture is not that great but you can find shorter excerpts from this in much better quality on YouTube.
Last but not least I wanted to post an episode of Tales From The Crypt since I was sure they adapted The Black Ferris. Well, they didn´t. BUT there is an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater - which I had no idea existed. And one last thing about Ray Bradbury ( I know, I am talking too much ) if you want to get The Black Ferris by Jack Davis for your comic collection and you can´t find the Gladstone reprints and the hardcover collections are too expensive it was also reprinted in issue 2 of Topps Comics´ Ray Bradbury Comics which you should find easily in dollar bins.
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