It´s Marvel Master Monday with Kurt Busiek

I have completely given up any idea of catching up with all the birthdays so for the next few weeks you will see a lot of posts going online after the actual birthdays have passed. So in the hopes of posting more regularly I want to start AVENGERS WEEK with Kurt Busiek who celebrated his 57th birthday last Saturday and whose run of AVENGERS volume three together with super star artist George Perez can only be described as legendary.

When I thought about doing this post my first idea was to do another post about all the series he has done - most of which I have read with great enthusiasm. But I quickly came to the conclusion that this would not be the best plan. On one side I didn´t have a lot of material one some of them - like THUNDERBOLTS, UNTOLD TALES OF SPIDER - MAN or POWER COMPANY - while I´ve done numerous posts about others like ASTRO CITY .

Last year I did a post for Mike Mignola´s birthday instead of one for Kurt Busiek since they both celebrate their birthdays on the same day. Back then I had planned to do a special post on Kurt Busiek´s AVENGERS run which I - as so often - never came around to do but you know how they say : better late than never. Now when I knew that I was going to do a post on Kurt Busiek´s AVENGERS run I started to go through all the George Perez artwork since you can never have enough Perez art on your blog.

But after I had done my first selection I realized that my usual approach would not work here. First of all, by posting original black and white art plus the colored page I would not only seriously limit the number of art pieces, it would also not really showcase Kurt Busiek and more George Perez especially with those original art pages that were without text.

So with another twist I then chose some of the - at least for me - most iconic pages from the run as well as some with what made this such a great series : the interaction between the characters. Plus instead of just concentrating on George Perez we are going to have all the great artists who helped out during the run like Alan Davis foremost, who did most of the heavy lifting after George Perez had left but also acknowledging such fan favorites or personal favorites like Steve Epting or Paul Ryan. And how could I ignore John Romita Jr ? Even his one issue was an event in itself.

I know that this was just a taste of things to come and nothing against Brian Michael Bendis´s run on AVENGERS but it was just too much let´s bring the super hero genre into the real world and pour on the big concepts for my taste and I still wonder what it would have been like to have John Romita Jr draw the AVENGERS with Kurt Busiek at the helm during a good old fashioned no - holds - barred super hero drag down. 

Back to Kurt Busiek, here are the pieces from the George Perez drawn issues I selected. I still hope I can do a special AVENGERS post for him since I didn´t get to do one for his birthday this year. He was the perfect artist for this series because there are only a few who´d take the chore of having to draw every super hero who has ever been a member of the Avengers as a special incentive. And who could pull it off with such class.

After George Perez Alan Davis stepped in to take on the art duty and if you need someone to follow George Perez, please, pick somebody like Alan Davis. He also excels at drawing hundreds of characters on one page so this was a wise choice. With Alan you can always see if he´s excited in the project he works on in the art and he definitely was on a roll here.

At this point is should be moot to pimp Kurt Busiek´s run on AVENGERS, not only because everybody should already have it in his comic collection but also because I already did this on several occassions. When the new omnibus editions of this came out I toyed of getting this - again - for a short time because there are a few issues where the reproduction is not that great in the oversized hardcover edition I have. But while I DO like the fact that some of these omnibus book really pack a lot of issues it also makes them really not reader friendly because of their size and weight.

Anyway, no matter if you go for the omnibus, the smaller hardcovers, the trades or the single issues this is a must have. And if you need another incentive here are a few of the other great artists you will encounter. 

While I still cling to the hope of someday returning to a somewhat semi - regular posting schedule there are a lot of links that I want to keep for certain posts that are already in the pipeline but there are a few that I think fit the topic of this post so I want to share them with my readers.

First off, if you are still undecided if you should get this run do not take my word for it and instead listen to WITH GREAT POWER which reviews the first hardcover of Avengers Assemble to get an idea if this would be interesting for you. Now the review in question handles one of the best times of the Avengers and as we here always like to go from one extreme to the other there is the worst of the worst as THE UNSPOKEN DECADE covers everything wrong with Avengers in that dark time called the 90s.

If you are a long time reader you already know that I think that not everything was bad in 90s comics but when it was bad it got really bad.

For more Avengers assembling comic book coolness caretaker STEVE DOES COMICS has a post on the battle between the Vision and the Silver Surfer in Avengers 116 which was part of the Avengers / Defenders War plus make sure to visit the AVENGERS CHRONOLOGY website for the ( almost ) complete Avengers reading order and anything else Avengers related.

Before we come to our usual entertainment block there are the obligatory birthdays I missed this year but have covered previously to go through - for those readers that initially missed the posts or want to re - read them one more time - which thankfully are only two ( since I already put up the link for last year´s birthday post for Mike Mignola at the beginning of the post ) because the following comic book creator / celebrity birthday / pop culture / movie or cult siren trivia and tidbits section is rather long Today.

So without any further delay we start with Joe Kubert for whom I finally managed to do a post last year in which I also re - tell the story of my encounter with him during one of my earliest visits to the International Comic Salon in Erlangen. Before that I was not too thrilled about his art but after seeing him in action that changed drastically. It took me quite some time to find the right piece for this part - as it is no easy task to narrow it down to just one cover that encompasses all of his illustrative genius - but the upside to that is that now I have enough material to do an - if belated - post for the great master. If I only can find the time.

We continue with one of my favorite cult sirens Cassandra Peterson a.k.a. Elvira who combines two ( or three ? ) of my favorite things : horror and big boobs. Although I have already done various Elvira posts last year I wrote two more and strangely enough both of them were comic related which should make half of my readers happy at least. The first one had mostly black and white art while the second one had mostly color pieces.

There are still a lot of comic pages left in a folder so don´t be surprised if there are one or two new Elvira posts popping up in the next months.



Our fun block starts with Oliver Stone who turned 71 on September the 15th. He is best known for his movies about political topics like Born On The Fourth Of July, Nixon, The Day Reagan Was Shot or JFK but he also did more action oriented movies like Natural Born Killers, The Corruptor or Blue Steel with sexbomb Jamilf Lee Curtis - which is the main reason why I wanted to include him. I tried to find a GIF of Jamie Lee Curtis from one of those movies but most I found are from her incredibly hot striptease in True Lies which is not really surprising since it´s one of the best in movie history. Jamie´s birthday is towards the end of the year so I don´t know if I can make another re - post of her original post or even a new post but just in case I want to include the link for the post I did on her last year which has lots of great GIFs. And yes, a lot of them are from True Lies .

Also celebrating his 71st birthday was Tommy Lee Jones who was in JFK and Natural Born Killers - among others like The Fugitive, The Client and my favorite movie with Tommy Lee Jones is Under Siege because it has another hot striptease from my Top Ten Movie Striptease List, this time by Erika Eleniak. Her 49th birthday is on the 29th of this month but since there is nothing I could add at this point I doubt that I will do a re - post so just check out the post I did last year with more and better GIFs.

One of the sexiest MILFs in Tinseltown Jennifer Tilly celebrated her 59th birthday on the 16th of September and although she appeared in classics as Embrace Of The Vampire ( where her performance is overshadowed by Alyssa Milano´s naked breasts ), Liar Liar or Bound I never got to do a proper post on her. Which is the reason I haven´t posted the video below yet as she has a few post credit / in the middle of the credits scenes in Curse of Chucky. Now the title is a bit misleading since a few of these scenes don´t change EVERYTHING but rather stress a point that was made in the movie but was not that obvious - except for the discerned viewer - or give you a little extra that is nice but doesn´t really change anything.



The brunette knocker knockout has slowly but surely built an impressive resume, including an Oscar nomination for her performance in the 1994 Woody Allen period comedy Bullets Over Broadway. Notorious for her squeaky voice which might alienate the squeamish of ear ( while turning on all others ) and her naturally large breasts, she has often displayed deep cleavage in photos as well as in movies. On occasions she is topless in movies, but rarely in full frontal form, though she did do a fully nude scene during the 2001 Broadway revival of the play The Women. Showing a good sense of humor, she parodied herself in Seed of Chucky in 2004.

Now last year I decided only to post one video of Jennifer Tilly which was extremely difficult. Even leaving all the movie clips aside that still leaves her oversexed appearances on Craig Ferguson´s Late Late Show or the episode of The Graham Norton Effect ( was this the program he did before The Graham Norton Show ? ) where she is rocking a huge cleavage.

But in light of the fact that I still have most of the Jennifer Tilly videos I bookmarked last year I am not even trying. Which brings us to the topic of the poker tournaments and to back this up a little Jennifer Tilly playing poker caught me completely by surprise. At that time they had started to show poker games on tv in Germany and to say the truth I just couldn´t stand it. It was on at least two tv stations and one of them showed them every day. And during every commercial break on any tv station you had to endure at least three commercials about playing poker. So naturally I did not watch any of it and when I found out what I missed I was of course devastated and had to turn to the internet to find clips on YouTube.



What really got me was that everybody was really excited about it which is no wonder since it´s not everyday that Jennifer puts her raunchy rack on display like that. Of course when you use such weapons of mass erection playing poker - and Jennifer had no problems distracting her opponents by showing off her gorgeous breasts - it plays with the imagination and there was a lot of sexual innuendo and play of words concerning that. The list goes from " huge pair ", " top pair ", " big flash " to everything else and words like " poker " suddenly sound like " poke her " and " going all in " had another meaning. To break the others concentration Jennifer made sure to bend over quite often even using the old " Oops, I have to pick up my bag. " excuse to give everyone present a good eyeful of her perfect 36C puppies. It´s a wonder ( or a shame ) they didn´t fall out of her dress.

Now for this I am re - posting the best clip of Jennifer Tilly playing poker and using her big pair to distract her opponents EVER !!! You can see by her smile that she´s fully aware that both guys are staring at her boobs.

The guy she tries to beat acts like he doesn´t notice that she is putting her twin torpedoes on display because he knows that once he takes a peek at her massive mounds of pleasure he is done for. But so does Jennifer who uses every dirty trick in the book like leaning forward, changing positions so she is shoving them in his face making sure he can´t help getting a good eyeful or putting her huge puppies on the table where they are better illuminated all the while thinking : " I´ll get you hard yet. "

They are both dissimulating and it looks like he´s praying for strength not to look at her and to keep his huge erection from breaking the table. I think this is called the cleavage standoff. In the end Jennifer´s clever tactics win : he has given up all resistance and is drooling all over her.



Our first candidate in the Dearly Departed section is Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall who starred in the 1974 adaption of Murder On The Orient Express. She appeared in some of the best known Humphrey Bogart movies like To Have And Have Not, Key Largo, The Big Sleep but also in How To Marry A Millionaire with Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe which I bought last year but as usual I haven´t had the time to re - watch it yet.

I still remember the basic plot and any movie with Marilyn Monroe in the cast is worth watching, she was just the epitome of beauty and elegance - even wearing glasses. That´s one thing I´ve completely forgotten about.

Coming back to Lauren Bacall, as coincidence would have it she appeared in Sex And The Single Girl together with Tony Curtis ( the father of the aforementioned cult siren Jamie Lee Curtis ) and Natalie Wood who both starred in The Great Race with our next birthday candidate Peter Falk.

He is best known for playing the disheveled mastermind on Columbo a series that is still on reruns. Something else that is not as often on the television as it used to be but what you can still see from time to time is the aforementioned The Great Race called The Great Race Around The World in Germany ( Das große Rennen rund um die Welt ) with Natalie Wood as Maggie Dubois, Tony Curtis as The Great Leslie and Jack Lemon as evil Professor Fate. Peter Falk plays Profesor Fate´s henchman Maximilian Meen and as an interesting fact Denver Pyle whom we all love from The Dukes Of Hazard plays the Sheriff. Also originally Robert Wagner was supposed to play the lead but because he had recently divorced Natalie Wood they went with Tony Curtis. Natalie Wood wasn´t the first choice for the role of Maggie Dubois either but they gave her the part after Lee Remick declined and Jane Fonda decided to walk off to do Cat Ballou.

Initially The Great Race was a flop and it is known for having the biggest pie fight in movie history. My whole family would always watch it but since it hasn´t been on tv for quite some time I may be forgiven for making an error last year. Initially I wrote that my favorite part of the movie is the scene when Natalie Wood rips up her clothes and tries to escape in her underwear. Well, after re - watching the movie I can attest that Nathalie Wood is not only in underwear in this scene but basically for the rest of the movie. Which is another incentive to get this great movie on DVD.

Speaking of getting things on DVD, I was looking for Wacky Races on amazon Germany but that´s not easy if cartoons have a different name here. The only thing I came up with was a game. Now I decided to include the video of Wacky Races because it was not only inspired by The Great Race it also has a comic connection with its own seven issue series by Gold Key in 1969 and the recent Wacky Raceland re - imagination by DC.

I don´t know if this new comic book version is any good but I guess that depends as I have read mixed reviews online. The only series of re - imaginations of Hannah Barbera cartoons where people are consistently positive is Future Quest so I will keep an eye out for trade paperbacks.



Yesterday´s celebrity birthdays start with Thailand born fitness, swimsuit and lingerie model Jewel Santini who turned 33. To paraphrase one well known song sung by the aforementioned Marilyn Monroe Jewel is a man´s best friend and she has brought me luck since the last post in which I posted a picture of her went straight into the Top Ten Posts list. I don´t know if that´s solely because of her since that post also featured Elvira ( whom I have also already mentioned in this post ) but why take any risks ?

Another hot sexbomb is adult movie star Carolyn Monroe who celebrated her 49th birthday. She was one of the big porn mega stars when I was old enough to rent videocassettes and I always pictured her as Power Girl whenever I watched her movies like Les Menteuses ( The Liars ) which uses the so called " Rashomon effect " in which three versions of the same event are shown. In the movie two old friends - Carolyn Monroe and the equally hot Beatrice Valle - meet and tell each other their latest sexual escapades. The first version is what the woman in turn tells what has happened which is the completely over the top sexed up version.

The second version is always what the other woman thinks has happened which is a slightly tamer version of the story. And the final version is the reveal what really happened which mostly involves having no sex at all.

In the old comics artist Wally Wood kept making Power Girl´s breasts bigger and bigger to see how far he could take it. Or at least that´s the urban legend. Fact is that the artists after him drew her with normal proportions .... or what is considered normal for superheroines. Till Bart Sears took over the character and buffed her up and returned her to her signature breast size - at least for up until the NEW 52 WORLDS´ FINEST fiasco.

When I started to read american comics the DC universe was brand new thanks to the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS fallout and I grabbed all the series I didn´t know which included the two fisted combo of JUSTICE LEAGUE by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire and JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE also by Giffen and Matteis, art by Bart Sears and inks by Pablo Marcos whom I knew from his work on DEFENDERS. I don´t know if it was fate but the very first issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE I got was issue 4 in which Power Girl, Flash and Animal Man share a hotel room as they go to Bialya on an undercover mission. I re - read the issue a few times and I always wondered if these more human - and more horny in the case of Flash - heroes didn´t spend the waiting time in a more adult way.

What can I say ? I was doing my military service in Munich at that time which meant I had a lot of free time on my hands, a room for myself, a vivid imagination and there were practically no women around save those I saw on tv or in comics. So naturally the idea of Animal Man using some kind of pheromones for a threeway with Power Girl piqued my interest.

Now as strange coincidences would have it this is usually the part where I explain european game show TUTTI FRUTTI and our next birthday is Tracy Dali who turned 51. You might have seen the big breasted brunette in movies like Back To The Future II or Bikini Summer II with Jessica Hahn, whom I mentioned in a previous post and she also has been in Beverly Hills 90210 and Beverly Hills Bordello - which might be where some of the characters from the cult tv show may end up. In Beach Movie she starred next to playmates Brande Roderick, Traci Bingham and Victoria Silvstedt.

Back to Tracy Dali, while she may be known for her many appearances in such erotic classics like Virtual Girl in America she is best known in Europe for being one of the girls who took off her clothes on TUTTI FRUTTI which brings us back to porn star Carolyn Monroe and the whole Power Girl thing.

I mean it must have been around the same time when I read Bart Sear´s version of Power Girl in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE and when I saw Monique Sluyter´s Marilyn Monroe impersonation on TUTTI FRUTTI .

So far I always linked to the annual re - posts of italian mega soccer MILF Simona Ventura to explain TUTTI FRUTTI but I added so many GIFs to the posts that it took forever to load. And since that totally defeats the purpose of the links I made a new post about Monique Sluyter and the Tutti Frutti Girls I can link to. For another JUSTICE LEAGUE connection Monique also was a candidate from my Justice League of America casting series - I cast her as Fire a.k.a. Beatriz da Costa in the Andy Sidaris Special - and you can still check out my posts about mega MILF Simona Ventura.

We come to the music video of the post with singer Anastacia who celebrated her 49th birthday. I gave her a post of her own on the old blog but it´s been over seven years that I read or heard anything about her. But then I found this GIF and - BAM ! - I remembered why I like her.

How do you condense an entire post into a few short sentences ? You don´t. I will just have to keep hoping that I can write an entire post on her. Now when I last wrote about Anastacia she had just gotten a breast reduction because she was diagnosed with breast cancer and I was a bit disappointed that she didn´t get reconstructive surgery to get her old size back. But that was before I had my own surgery and if you don´t know how that works you believe it´s like on tv where Michael Knight has an accident and after the surgery he looks like David Hasselhoff. Anyway, in 2013 Anastacia was diagnosed with breast cancer again and while she is now cancer free she had to undergo a double mastectomy. Let´s just hope that was the last time and Anastacia manages to stay in good health.



Man, what a downer. But that is what happens in the entertainment block, I get to catch up on all the Hollywood news. Also in the Whatever Happened To ? section is Dustin Nguyen, who celebrates his 55th birthday.

He is of course best known for playing Officer Harry Truman Ioki on 21 Jump Street but I totally forgot that he also had a big role as John Loh on the Pamela Anderson vehicle VIP. Man, I used to watch that show almost religiously to get my weekly dose of Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson.

Well it seems like Dustin has managed to keep himself busy with things like doing the voice of Trahn on Phantom 2040. Ioki will also be in The Man With The Iron Fists 2 and I just hope that it´s better than the first part. I was so excited to see it and there was like not one thing that fit with something else. Talk about Do It Yourself gone horribly wrong. Seriously.



We start our Dearly Departed section with the wonderful Anne Bancroft who was in a lot of movies where I forgot she was in like in G.I.Jane although I may be forgiven for that. I just couldn´t get my eyes off Demi Moore bending over to give you a good eyeful of her low hanging sweaty boobs. Man, that woman has a body like you wouldn´t believe ! Okay, you believe it because you´ve seen it in movies but you know what I mean.

Anne Bancroft also appeared in the Mel Brooks spoof Dracula - Dead And Loving It whichs main attraction is sexy bloodsucker Lysette Anthony squeezing her boobs tightly together. Now while that in itself is worth mentioning to have luscious Lysette on the blog again the main reason for that is that she celebrates another birthday towards the end of this month and I hope I can write a bit longer about her when that happens.

Also no longer with us is John Ritter who had his first big break in Three´s Company and played the Dad in Problem Child alongside the late Jack Warden who would have had another birthday Today. John also did some voice acting as Doctor David Wheeler on Batman Beyond and Inspector Gil in the Fish Police cartoon of which I think I saw a few episodes. But I can not really feel sorry for John as he got to work with some serious babes like Suzanne Somers or the aforementioned Jennifer Tilly in Bride Of Chucky. Heck, he even got to work with 80s Power Girl Markie Post twice.

First in the tv movie Tricks Of The Trade where she played a hooker ( a role she was really predestined for with her blow up sex doll body ) and then on a regular basis on the series Hearts Afire. It´s true, Markie didn´t appear in a bikini there like in a few occassions on The Fall Guy but there were enough low cut dresses and deep cleavages to keep your interest.

In Todays birthdays we start with Jada Pinkett Smith who turns 46. She met her husband on the set of sitcom classic The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air which instantly introduced her to a worldwide television audience.

Of course a big part of that show´s success and continued appeal around the world ( there are probably only a few people on the face of the planet who can´t recite the lyrics to the title song in their sleep ) is Tatyana Ali who grew from a cute little girl into an incredible sexbomb over the course of that series and who got to show her musical skills.

Much to the chagrin of the show´s producers she really bOObed all out in later movie appearances like The Clown at Midnight or Fall Into Darkness .

While being on The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air Jada had her first big role in A Low Down Dirty Shame, written and directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans.

What´s more important is that she was in Tales From The Crypt : Demon Knight, the first movie where they went away from the anthology format of earlier films and told an autonomous story. The movie also featured Baywatch babe Traci Bingham ( or like I like to call her Traci Banghim ) and her big 36D floating devices as well as sexbomb Brenda Bakke whom you might have seen strutting her stuff in Hot Shots 2 or American Gothic.

Jada then appeared in the Eddie Murphy vehicle The Nutty Professor, which also featured Athena Massey famous for her role in the skin flick classic Undercover Heat and Lisa Boyle who also regularly took her clothes off in erotic movies besides starring in episodes of Married With Children.

Jada Pinkett Smith also starred in Set It Off, Scream 2, Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolution and she´s currently on Gotham where her character Fish Mooney is the only good thing about that train wreck of a show.



We´re staying with the horror theme ( and when I say horror that includes Gotham ) with Veronica Carlson who celebrates her 73rd birthday and is best known for her appearance in many Hammer Studio movies like The Horror Of Frankenstein which will be the topic of a not to far off post. Because I already had prepared all the necessary GIFs last year but once again I don´t have the time. But don´t fear the post is not scratched, only postponed so you won´t be deprived of Miss Carlson´s charms forever.

Originally I put a video about the Hammer mummies here but since I don´t want to have two documentaries in a row on a post here is an analysis of another Avengers collaboration between Kurt Busiek and George Perez.



New to the blog ? Everything you need to know about TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN : top ten posts / more posts of interest / best of the best

Sorry to disappoint you but in my world, it looks like the dials go up to eleven !