This will be just a short post - hopefully - since I really don´t have that much to say about him. You all know his art so I will let the pieces speak for themselves. I tried not to pick too many covers from one publisher to keep things balanced while still including some of my personal favorites.
There are no links for Today´s post since I have been compiling the art since I missed Alex Ross´ birthday last year so there are no thanks to give to other websites. I also have no other essays or articles about Alex Ross so I may be able to make a short post for once. So the pop culture / video section is all about the day´s birthdays and we start with somebody I just mentioned in my last post as one of the hot babes who guest starred on Renegade, Linda Blair who turns 59. She is truly a cult siren because not only was her first movie role in the cult horror movie The Exorcist - for which she was nominated for an Acedemy Award and won a Golden Globe - but after a few controversial dramatic tv films she established herself as a sex symbol with Roller Boogie and while her acting hadn´t developed much her body certainly had in all the right areas which she showed in numerous exploitation films like Hell Night, Chained Heat ( sometimes billed as Red Heat which led to some confusion when the Schwarzenegger movie of the same name came out ), the cult thriller Savage Streets or Savage Island. Anything with the word " savage " in it. This gave her the nickname " the sexorcist " and she was a constant presence in the adult section of video stores when I was old enough to watch these movies.
I haven´t seen all her movies but I know that the most outstanding thing from Hell Night is Linda´s cleavage in a Little Red Riding Hood costume she wears as it takes place during Halloween as so many did after the success of Halloween by John Carpenter - whom I mentioned in a recent post.
Now while Linda Blair DID get naked in quite a few of these movies like Chained Heat, where she starred with another cult siren - Sybil Danning who appeared in the Andy Sidaris cult classic Malibu Express - and where you really got your money´s worth where nudity in women´s prison films is concerned, the covers for the videos could be misleading sometimes.
For instance, on most of the covers for Savage Streets Linda Blair is depicted wearing a skintight black leather suit while in the movie she doesn´t get to wear it until the big finale and even then only for a short time. Fun trivia fact : most of the art from the australian movie poster for Savage Streets was used for the pakistani movie poster for Robo Force.
Despite the lack of leather clad Linda Blair for most of Savage Streets it is a cult classic because it delivers on everything you expect from a revenge flick and there are a lot of naked women in this one including Linda Blair. It´s easy to see why she became such a popular star in the 80s and 90s.
Now as longtime readers of this blog know one of my pet peeves is giving credit to those brave and for the most part unsung heroines of cinema who turn insufferable dreck into bearable entertainment by taking their clothes off or at least show what their Mama gave them and who don´t get enough recognition for that. So I have to mention two actresses, Linnea Quigley who shows that she has real acting chops and is not only good at taking off her clothes which is what she did in most of her later movies ( she also does it here but not in a gratuitous way ) as Linda´s deaf - mute younger sister Heather. The other is Suzee Slater whose topless scene may be short but it´s the most memorable from the entire movie and it will pop up whenever you look for pictures of Savage Streets.
But the most misleading movie poster of a Linda Blair movie is Savage Island - not to be confused with Savage Islands, the title sometimes used for Nate and Hayes, a 1983 pirate movie starring Michael O´Keefe and Tommy Lee Jones. As the Squonk puts it in his review of the movie on FORGOTTEN FILMS : " Linda Blair in a jungle setting wearing torn lingerie and carrying a machine gun. You want to see that movie, don´t you ?
No, you don´t ! No such image appears in the actual film. In fact, Linda has little more than a cameo. " You can read more about the movie in the review I linked above and the reason why it´s probably one of the worst movies attached to Linda Blair is the fact that it was movie recycling at its worst as Linda only appears in the framing sequence and the rest of the movie was cut together from two other movies : Escape From Hell and Hotel Paradise. Both have the same cast among which 80s soft sex icon Ajita Wilson stands apart front and center. I always had the impression that she accepted the roles that Laura Gemser considered too slutty.
Because there are no videos from Linda Blair´s sexplotation movies in good quality I am including one from Roller Boogie and this is the third time I have changed it. Originally I put the " german trailer " here which was actually the first fifteen minutes of the movie in the german dubbing.
After that was deleted because of copyright infringement I found the complete film in german but I don´t think that will stay long on YouTube either and if you really want to see it it´s not difficult. Then I wanted to add the english intro but there was not enough Linda Blair in it so instead here is the boogie contest from the movie. Yep, roller skates were a thing.
The only downside to this clip is that you don´t get to see much of buxom blond beachbody Kimberly Beck who is way hotter than Linda Blair and whose overflowing cleavage provides a few highlights of the movie.
We return to street gangs in the 90s with comic book editor and writer Howard Mackie who celebrates his 60th birthday. He has written a lot of x - titles, including the complete 32 issue run of Mutant X ( initially the series was only to be 12 issues long ), but besides writing one of the few Spider - Man titles in the 90s you could still read - Peter Parker : Spider - Man with art by John Romita Jr. he is best known for co - creating the new Danny Ketch Ghost Rider together with artist Javier Saltares.
This video was initially reserved for a post that I wanted to write about this topic but since I already wrote about this in one post and I don´t know when I will have the time to revisit the topic here is some Ghost Rider 101 about his western roots for comic book greenhorns. Yee - haa !
Speaking about posts I never got around to do, I don´t know if it is coincidence that I decided to check out Dennis Mallonee who turns 63 Today. And it´s not that the name sounded anything familiar. Now at first I thought I could skip him since he wrote comic books based on the game characters The Champions and I was never much into RPG games myself.
But then I read that he later published further Champions comics at his own comic company Hero Comics and suddenly everything clicked for me.
Because some of the first american comic books that mysteriously found their way to the newsstand at the Rathaus bus station in Ludwigsburg ( which is where I got most of my Schwermetall comics and John Sinclair pulp novels when I was going to school ) were books from that company : The Champions, Marksman, Eternity Smith, Rose and my personal favorite Captain Thunder & Blue Bolt with art by E.R. Cruz. I planned to post the complete series of Captain Thunder & Blue Bolt because when I started to go to comic conventions you could find them everywhere for a few bucks but I don´t think I have seen any issues from Hero Comics at conventions lately so new comic readers Today may not be even aware of its existence.
Speaking of which during the first six years of Hero Comics existence they published about 100 comic books but Hero Games became increasingly uncomfortable with them catering more to the public and depicting more attractive pin ups of the female heroes especially Sparkplug and Flare.
Some of the characters owners pulled their licensing rights while Gleen Thain and Stacy Lawrence allowed their characters - Icestar and Flare - to continue under Mallonee´s authorship. To avoid confusion Hero Games removed all characters that still appeared in the pages of Hero Comics and Dennis Mallonee changed the name of some charaters like the Marksman who became the Huntsman or Foxbat who was now called The Flying Fox.
He also developed many original characters over the years thus pushing his comics further away from the Hero Games Champions role play universe.
I don´t know if they still do print editions but I know that I have seen some printed issues from around 2006 at some of the online comic shops I frequent. Besides that they publish digital editions of their comics which you can find at amazon, Comixology or the HEROIC PUBLISHING website.
Now usually I do the birthdays in order but I just have to include Steve Perrin who celebrates his 72nd birthday here. He also comes from the world of RPG and besides creating Rune Quest and Stormbringer and working on Thieves´ World, Worlds of Wonder, Superworld, Call of Cthulhu and an Elfquest RPG he wrote the Champions RPG The Voice of Doom and later such series like The Marksman, Spakplug and Flare.
You can find out more about these guys at wikipedia ( I´m not going to put their entire entry here ) but the last thing I want to mention is that while most comic readers know Marvel Comics´ The Champions that was published from 1975 to 1978 not a lot of readers have heard of the Hero Publishing´s RPG game character based series. Nevertheless the United States Patent and Trademark Office has ruled that Marvel abandoned its trademark for the name and can no longer use The Champions as the name of a comic book series. Which is the reason why the newest collection of SJW wanna - be Avenger babies is called the adjectiveless Champions.
We are returning to better know super heroes with John Wesley Shipp who turns 63. Some people may know him as the Dad on Dawson´s Creek but thanks to his role on the new Flash tv series tv audiences not only recognize him as Henry Allen and Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth 2.It´s also thanks to that exposure that a new generation knows that he used to be the Flash in the 90s tv series which was about time. Because let´s face it, he is the one true Scarlet Speedster. Now all that we need is the Blue Ray.
Seriously, I´m so up for re - watching what in my opinion is one of the best super hero shows ever but so far I have not seen it anywhere in good quality. How is it that we can get the oldest and worst crap that was ever transmitted on a tv set in pristine quality but not this ? Anyway, here´s an interview where John Wesley Shipp talks about the old Flash show and the only thing that bums me out is that it took so long for him to get some recognition. At least he is in a place where he can still enjoy the ride.
We start our Dearly Departed section with Marshall Rogers who worked on a number of books at Marvel and DC but despite the fact that he did some outstanding work on Doctor Strange during Roger Stern´s run on the book he is best known for his groundbreaking work on Detective Comics with writer Steve Englehart that influences the entire Bat - universe to this day. Their version of the Joker is what people think of Today ( although that may soon change thanks to DC´s crappy portrayal of the character in their movies ) and the story " The Laughing Fish " may be the best Joker story ever. Now a while ago I bought the Legends of the Dark Knight : Marshall Rogers hardcover that collects his first work on Batman plus the mini series Batman : Dark Detective and a story - arc from Batman : Legends of the Dark Knight. And I can only recommend it if you really need his first brush with the Batman character in hardcover because the other stuff in here is not as good. If you only want the good stuff and you don´t need it in hardcover there is the Strange Apparitions trade which is much cheaper. I know that in Germany they have come out in trade for 20 bucks but you can get it cheaper in the Batman : Im Zeichen des Jokers hardcover from Eaglemoss´ DC Graphic Novel Collection for 13 Euros.
We come back to iconic super hero tv shows of my youth with Bill Bixby who is best remembered as Dr. David Banner in the Incredible Hulk tv show where Lou Ferrigno portrayed the Hulk. I know that a lot of Today´s comic readers look down on that show but back then that was the best we could get as far as super heroes on tv were concerned. This and the Spider - Man tv show where Spider - Man threw a fisherman´s net over the villains. By the way, the producer on the Hulk tv show thought that the original name of Hulk´s alter ego from the comics " Bruce " didn´t sound manly enough so he was called " David " which for me still doesn´t sound very macho. Like I said most people remember his from that show but he also starred in two other series I watched growing up : My Favorite Martian and The Magician. Anybody out there remembers these classics ?
Our last birthday is also connected to Marvel Comics because while Robert E. Howard created the subgenre of sword and sorcery with stories about such characters like Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane and King Kull it is his creation Conan the Cimmerian merc who made him famous worldwide.
There have been several comic book companies who have done new series with him but for me none of them can match the Marvel comics that were drawn by John Buscema and especially the period inked by Ernie Chan.
Last year I found Dark Horse´s volumes 22 and 23 of The Chronicles of Conan and volume 2 of The Chronicles of King Conan at amazon at a very low price and immediately gobbled them up. Now mind you, these are not outstanding issues by John Buscema or Ernie Chan and in the entire series these are in the lower field quality wise but God, was this an enjoyable read. I started to collect Dark Horse´s reprint of Conan when they came to the John Buscema issue because they re - colored them wonderfully but something happened around volume 9 that put me off. I don´t know if they suddenly lost interest or if they shipped the coloring off to Japan to be done by kids who work cheap but the coloring looked muddish, dirty and flat and it didn´t improve in the next ten volumes. Now the ones I got - 22 and 23 - have thankfully been spared this " improvement " but most of the preceding trades look worse than the old issues you find in dollar bins.
I already posted a video from the Conan cartoon in a previous post and since I´m convinced that´s an experience none of my readers want to repeat and a lot of this section has to do with some of my favorite stuff from my youth here´s one of my all - time favorites : Samurai Pizza Cats.
Now we make one last jump - albeit a small one - from asian animation to asian persuasion with k - pop band 4Minute. They are Hyuna´s band and I don´t think I have posted anything from them yet. And which better way to start then with Hit Your Heart ? Now this is a video I have been looking for a long time because all I had were some animated GIFs and as usual I didn´t have the time to name them properly so that I had no idea who they were or what was the name of the song. Well, Yesterday I was looking for some GIFs of Wassup´s Nari when I found all the necessary information.
I have to confess that those are without any doubt the best looking car mechanics I´ve seen in my life. I´d love to check their airbags and they can give my injection pump some asian lubrication whenever they want.
OMG, there are only five girls in this group but they are such incredible sexbombs that even the cameraman doesn´t know where to point his camera because he´s afraid he will miss something as soon as he focuses on any one of them. Thankfully with a video you can watch it again if that happens and I´m sure you will watch the videos I selected a few times.
Because it´s so easy to get distracted by all the asian sexastion´s bouncing oppai fan service and that´s when you miss the best parts.
I don´t know the name of this girl but she shows that she really knows how to spread her legs with some squatting that makes the best fitness babes envious and in some of the live acts her overall is constantly pushed apart by her big boobs. I wonder if she would give my piston a spit shine.
Usually I select five live appearances but because I wanted to include the official music video I had to bring it down to four. I based my selection on the quality of the picture, in which one they have the best outfits and which performances were the hottest. I hope I managed to pick the best ones and make sure you have some kleenex handy before you watch this.
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Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas there was an age undreamed of. And unto this Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure.
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