Which is probably a surprise ( although I hope a pleasant one ) for my longtime readers who expected to find another installment of FLASH FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN in this space. For which I have a very good excuse.
I didn´t do my homework.
Okay, I know this didn´t work in school and it doesn´t work now but let me explain. You see, the next issue for FLASH FRIDAY WITH PAUL RYAN is FLASH 135 and it is one of the first I did not prepare in advance. Which would not be such a big problem IF it was a stand alone issue. Because IF I had prepared this issue in advance I would have known that it is part 3 of a crossover with GREEN LANTERN and GREEN ARROW. So because I don´t want to throw my readers into the lion´s den at the tail end of a three part story I had to get all of the parts. Which wasn´t the big problem, no. Because in order to do the story chronologically we have to start with part 1 which is the GREEN LANTERN issue and I could not possibly do a FLASH FRIDAY post with GREEN LANTERN. So I will be putting all the parts on the blog chronologically, GREEN LANTERN on Monday followed by GREEN ARROW on Wednesday and then finally FLASH on Friday. I don´t want to turn this blog into a DC only blog so I hope I can do posts in - between.
So this still left me with a hole in my posting schedule and since I wanted to put up a DC post Today I thought why not continue with this series since the last time I did a post was back in January ? You might even want to go back and read issue 1 and issue 2 before you continue with Today´s issue that introduces a new dream team to the DC continuity : Supergirl and Lobo. Okay, on the other hand maybe not but now that I think about it I would like to see Lobo pop up in the Supergirl tv series just for fun.
By the way, how fitting that Destiny from the Endless appears in Mark Waid´s The Brave And The Bold since he used to host an anthology series himself ? That´s right, Destiny is the only member of SANDMAN´s cast of conceptual personifications which for some reason all stat with the letter d that Neil Gaiman didn´t come up with. Destiny was created by Marv Wolfman and Bernie Wrightson, hosting the first fourteen issues of WEIRD MYSTERY TALES before switching to SECRETS OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
And with that bit of trivia out of the way let´s join our story in progress.
It´s fitting that Today´s issue of The Brave And The Bold ends with the Legion of Super - Heroes because our first celebrity birthday is Patricia Mulvihill, who colored some of the covers of the so - called Archie Legion towards the end of their run. Now the reason why she´s our first birthday candidate is not because she´s the youngest but because I could find out her year of birth and don´t worry if the name does not sound familiar to you - even I had to research her. You are probably more familiar with her work since she colored - among a plethora of comic books - Alan Davis´ brilliant ELSEWORLDS series The Nail and Another Nail, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso´s 100 Bullets from issue 15 to 100 and above all the post - Crisis Wonder Woman from issue 78 in September 1993 to issue 200 in March 2004, an amazing ten and a half year run. She won two Thompson Awards and one Eisner Award ( she was nominated for an Eisner Award five more times ) and was also nominated twice for an Harvey Award.
Of course I could have as easily gone with Flo Steinberg as I also could not find out anything about her age but since she does not have the Legion connection I may be forgiven for mentioning her second. Of course every comic afficionado who read Marvel Comics of the 60s is familiar with Stan Lee´s girl Friday Fabulous Flo Steinberg a key participant of and witness to Marvel's expansion from a two - person staff to a pop culture conglomerate as she was not only responsible for the rapidly increasing amount of fan mail ( especially after the creation of the Merry Marvel Marching Society ) but also appeared in What If 11. Flo left Marvel Comics in 1968 because they denied her a raise of 5 dollars and after meeting Trina Robbins she published Big Apple Comix, one of the first alternative comics in 1975.
Can I say that I really envy rapper Ice - T ? Not only is he an award winning musician, iconic rapper and accomplished actor he also is married to a real life blow up sex doll, Busenwunder Nicole " Coco " Austin, who turns 38. Since she looks like the original Bart Sears Power Girl with her 39DD - 23 - 45 measurements I cast her in that role in the first part of the Subzero edition of my Casting the Justice League of America movie post series .
Not quite as busty is actress and tv host Pilar Rubio who celebrates her 39th birthday. The model who has posed nude in front of a camera was on ¡ Mira quién baila ! the spanish version of Dancing With The Stars and Operación triunfo the spanish version of Star Search but I know her from Sé lo que hicisteis la última semana ( I know what you did last week ).
Anyway, for all the poor readers who don´t watch spanish television here is a short medley of massssssita Pilar Rubio´s breast ... best moments.
Speaking of the b - word, Brittany Daniel turns 41 whom most people may know from Joe Dirt, Joe Dirt 2, It´s Always Sunny In California, Just Shoot Me !, Club Dread, That 70´s Show, That 80´s Show or Dawson´s Creek but for me she will always be the buxom blonde twin who saved my summer.
Longtime readers may remember my post from my return to Spain and how far away from everything it is back home. I don´t know if it was during the time when my mother tried to get me to cold turkey comics but one year there was really not much on tv and as I had already read all the books and comics I had brought from my last trip to civilization so I was starving for entertainment in form of movies and tv especially involving hot women.
Unfortunately my parents had the control over the remote at that time so the only chance to wrestle it away from them was while they were making dinner. Which meant I was stuck with prime time tv shows which were not really known for including a lot of scantily clad girls. You have to remember this was pre - 24h nonstop tv and naked chicks going at it on HBO. But as fate would have it I discovered Sweet Valley High, which would have been your average teen show if not for the fact that it had two incredibly hot blonde sexbombs with hardbodies that make guys go crazy as the main protagonists who were twins to top things off. Brittany played Jessica Wakefield while her real twin sister Cynthia Daniels - whom you might know from her role in The Basketball Diaries with Leonardo DiCaprio -
played Elizabeth Wakefield. This show really helped me through some rough ( and hard ) times and on some days a scene with Brittany / Cynthia in a hot outfit - or even better - a bikini was the highlight of that day.
Since they are twins they both celebrate their birthday Today so I want to be fair ( especially since I can´t be sure who wore which outfit in which scene and both are damn hot ) and say thanks for the mammaries to both.
Now with our next candidate I have a love / hate relationship because on one side you have to acknowledge that Peter Illmann - who turns 58 - was indeed the music tv presenter of the first hour years before Mtv and VIVA would appear on german tv screens. On the other hand it means I have to talk about Formel Eins which was the worst music show on german tv. But it was the only music we had ( if you don´t count Die Deutsche Hitparade which mainly played Schlager music ) so we had to bear the horror of it.
Peter Illmann was the first host and he was kind of a mack daddy although that only evolved over time. Still, he was not the best host. That dubious honor belongs to his replacement, Ingolf Lück who innovated the show by turning his introductions of the various musical acts and music videos ( they showed both ) into little sketches. It was only downhill after he left as they got their first female presenter Stefanie Tücking who was much too tame for this kind of show and she then handed the reigns over to Kai Böcking who was completely clueless. I remember that in his first show he had Sabrina Salerno as a guest and she was just too much woman for him.
At the time Sabrina Salerno, the cult siren with the obligatory bouncing action was at the height of her popularity in Germany thanks to her worldwide number 1 smash hit Boys Boys Boys ( which was especially popular in those countries that showed the uncensored version of her video where her tiny bikini top could not contain the singing sexbomb´s huge melons ) and various articles in teen publications like Bravo and Popcorn and nude pictorials in adult men´s magazines like Penthouse.
So they had to invite her to Formel Eins which was the music tv for german teenagers. The show was a total train wreck, they always cut the videos because the producer of the show was in Bavaria and they are very catholic and prudish down there. When Sabrina was there as a guest they didn´t play her video and told her she had to do a live performance. Which was obviously more than they bargained for because Sabrina began to shake rattle and roll her boobs up and down like there´s no Tomorrow.
Of course they were appalled but they could not do anything against it. The camera man tried to prevent the worst by doing a lot of close ups and just filming Sabrina´s head but as you can see it didn´t help that much.
Since Sabrina just celebrated her 49th birthday this Wednesday you can read more about her ( and british pop star Samantha Fox ) on her re - posted cult siren entry . Coming back to Formel Eins, while Kai Böcking did the most shows with 120 episodes they ultimately had to cancel it because of the upcoming competition of Mtv and VIVA who showed all music video in full and not only one per show. By that time Peter Illmann was no longer on tv although after leaving Formel Eins he did another music program, P.I.T. - Peter Illmannns Treff which was quite successful for a while. Here is the first intro of the first episode of Formel Eins.
Speaking of guys with the mack factor Kurt Russell turns 66 and he proves that he still has it in movies like The Hateful Eight and Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 where he will play John Byrne. I mean, Ego the living planet.
So I guess his machismo is not in question and I don´t have to mention that he not only rescued the young Kim Catrall in the cult movie Big Trouble In Little China but also spent some time with up and coming star Teri Hatcher who demonstrated her stripping skills in Tango & Cash.
Now Kurt Russell has done quite a few movies with John Carpenter like Escape From New York ( which has the brilliant title The Rattlesnake in Germany so the first time I heard Escape From New York I did not know what the people were talking about ) or The Thing. Although it initially flopped at the box office it became a cult movie with quite a following and there are a lot of artists who have done their own version of the movie poster. A while back I came across a bunch of them but they were not enough for a full blown post so when John Carpenter celebrated his last birthday I set them aside for Kurt Russell´s anniversary. Because by then I would clearly have enough. Yeah, right. Anyway, I will look for a few more versions of the movie poster - if I can find the time for it - and maybe I can do a full post. In the meantime here is that Making Of .
Someone who I can picture drinking a few beers and riding his Horex with Ingolf Lück ( with Sabrina Salerno as his back warmer ) is german comic icon Rötger Feldmann a.k.a. Brösel who celebrates his 67th birthday.
In Germany you don´t have to explain him because his creation Werner was at one time the most famous comic. Werner is a unemployed biker who spends his time souping up his motorcycle, consuming large amounts of beer and getting into trouble with the police and the TÜV, the german vehicle safety agency who due to their expressed incompetency are usually ignored and duped by Werner. Werner is an everyday man readers can identify with and one of the biggest factors of its success is the anarchic humour, often based on northern german dialects and puns.
In fact standard high german is rarely spoken in the books, when it is used it is usually to portray the speaker as overtly formal and square, whereas most characters employ accents and dialects placed in a lingual continuum between the common modern northern pronunciation of high german.
Which made the comics accessible to a readership that´s largely ignored by publishers and gave it an exotic touch to those that are not that fluent in dialects. Another reason for its quick rise to fame was that before the stories were released in trades mini comics were sold everywhere for one or two Deutschmarks which everyone could afford. And because of the small size it would fit anywhere. I remember that when I was at school we always bought one or two if we had the money to spare. But Werner really became famous with the movies : the first one ( which was partially drawn and live action ) is Germany´s third most commercially successful film of the 1990s on the german domestic market and number 14 of Germany´s most successful domestic market films of all time. And there have been four additional Werner movies, all completely drawn this time around. Of course such a huge success cannot last forever and so a lot of people have forgotten about the Werner comics - including me. And that despite the fact that the very first sketch I ever got in Erlangen was drawn by Brösel.
Well, it seems it is once again time to unearth my old trades to see which ones I am missing because it seems that Brösel has not been languishing and there seem to be a few new ones I wasn´t aware of. Including the newest one Volle Latte ! where it seems like Werner finally gets laid.
Originally I wanted to include the music video Beinhart ! by Torfrock but then I unearthed this report that not only includes some scenes from the cartoon movies and also footage from the famous race Horex vs Porsche.
Our last and final celebrity birthday candidate ( my god, it feels like I have been writing this addendum for days now ) is Patrick Duffy who turns 68 and is best known for portraying Bobby Ewing in Dallas which featured just a plethora of hot babes like Stacy Sanchez, Michelle Johnson, Priscilla Presley, Coleen Camp, Charlene Tilton, Deborah Shelton, Morgan Fairchild, Barbara Carrera, Tracy Scoggins, Claudia Christian, Lesley Anne - Down, Victoria Principal, Janine Turner or Audrey Landers who together with her sister Judy Landers was one of the hottest commodities of that time.
But as astonished as I am to see myself write this - maybe it´s the fatigue - I think we already have more than enough hot women in this post so instead I want to talk about a different tv series. Long before he voiced Steve Trevor on Justice League Patrick played another super hero, the only equivalent of Aquaman or Namor we were going to get on tv screens.
Yes, that´s right. I´m talking about the aquatic anachronism, the deep - sixed defender, the nomadic nautilus, the water warrior of the waves Mark Harris a.k.a. The Man From Atlantis which not only had a sadly short lived tv series but also a brief seven issue comic book series by Marvel.
Man, with italian 80s sexbomb Sabrina Salerno, 80s cult show Formel Eins, Brösel´s Werner, John Carpenter´s Big Trouble In Little China and The Thing, Sweet Valley High and now The Man From Atlantis this part feels like a part of my childhood. Which basically is the whole idea behind this section : me rambling about the things of Yesteryear. And apropos, I kinda liked The Man From Atlantis. It was not high entertainment - most stuff that was on tv at that time wasn´t - but despite the formulaic antagonism of the evil Schubert ( which for some reason never came up in music class ) it was entertaining and I was not too discerning as long as I got to see a super hero on tv. Or at least the tv producer´s version of a super hero.
You can read the first issue on DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND ( and when I say the first issue this includes feature articles, pin ups and the letters page ), SPACE : 1970 has a cover gallery from that series plus the original black and white art for a Mark Harris pin up by the great Gene Colan, PLAIDSTALLIONS has some pages from the UK comic that was published in the Look - In magazine, for a lengthy article on Look - In visit Mark West´s STRANGE TALES website and last but not least the tv series is on ME TV list of 15 Forgotten Sci - Fi And Fantasy Series Of The 1970s.
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Good luck happens to people who work hard for it.
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