Spider - Man Week starts with John Romita

I am running a bit late because I spent most of the day in bed after pulling an all - nighter so I wouldn´t be late for my appointment at the jobcenter but one reason why it took me until now to finish up on my last post is that I also was preparing all the stuff for John Romita´s 88th anniversary.

I know, " What kind of week starts on Wednesday ? " but Sal Buscema´s birthday is in two days and because I already know that his post will be about his marathon on SPECTACULAR SPIDER - MAN I thought why not do a theme week ? If Terry Hooper can do endless AVENGERS posts why can´t I have some fun too ? It also could show all those comic readers out there who only know the politically correct SJW version of Peter Parker how awesome this title used to be. Now originally I had a lot of german, french and italian comic covers here but I exchanged most of them for american covers because of their poor quality. I did however keep a few german covers from my favorite issues - which you might have guessed from the first cover in this post. Before we get to all the incredible art by John Romita though I have to drop a few links for new readers. I did a post on John Romita Sr. in 2016 which is all about the Marvel Visionaries : John Romita Sr hardcover which I can´t recommend enough, I posted issues 108 and 109 of AMAZING SPIDER - MAN and last year I did a post on AMAZING SPIDER - MAN ANNUAL 16 where he inked his son John Romita Jr´s pencils.

I thought I had no links for this post but after going through my bookmarks I found this one in which STEVE DOES COMICS talks about Amazing Spider - Man 86. In the issue which was inked by Jim Mooney the Black Widow got her new skin tight leather costume and John Romita really used all his artistic powers to turn a third - rate female villain into one of the big femme fatales in the Marvel universe. You could suddenly understand why Hawkeye fell so hard for her. I mean not that Don Heck didn´t know how to draw her but he was quite hampered by her rather demure costume. 

Now for people who wanted to read these classic stories there used to be reprint books like Marvel Tales but when Marvel´s Essentials line started most readers switched over to those phone books even if they were not in color. At the moment Disney´s more interested in selling the issues in bigger packages like the Epic Collections, Marvel Masterworks or omnibus editions which is all fine but what if you only have limited amounts of cash ? Where can you get these with a smaller budget ? Well, there are the pocket book editions by PANINI UK and I for one have already 18 of these suckers on my shelf porn. I don´t think it´s complete but THE ESSENTIAL EXPLOITS OF SPIDER - MAN has a list with which pocket books contain which issues and you can find a lot of other Spider - Man related posts.  

Not related to Spider - Man or the Black Widow ( although she could fill out her tight leather suit with ease ) is Tiffany Amber Thiessen who celebrated her 44th birthday just Yesterday. The buxom brunette who has the best natural breasts in Hollywood - at least according to Howard Stern and believe me he has done some extensive research in that department - has been scorching the tv screen for quite some time with her curvaceous hardbody and her big 37DD Beverly Hills to the delight of males worldwide.

I never was a big fan of the Beverly Hills, 90210 show but that quickly changed when I saw wet Tiffani Thiessen´s booming breasts in a bikini - which was a product of mother nature - and Tori Spelling´s growing boobs - which were a gift of Daddy and the best plastic surgery money could buy.

There was a special episode that got my attention in which Tori Spelling was dancing in a leather hooker outfit while shooting a rock music video.

If you can call her wild fertility inducing movements dancing. She really was just shaking her big boobs in the general direction of the camera. But that she did very effectively. I never was a big Tori Spelling fan but in that scene she really squeezed her breast into a tight leather top and just pushed them straight in your face. Now that´s what I call entertainment.

Those directors got it made, they just go " Okay guys, in the next four episodes Tiffani dresses up as a prostitute. And she has to do at least one striptease and two nude sex scenes in each episode. Which is really necessary for her character. Oh yeah, and send her to my trailer for .... extreme rehearsal. We have to go over the scene ... orally. " Those horny perverts are to thank for that Tiffani was so often in bikinis on that show.

Speaking about hookers, besides appearing on Beverly Hills 90210 Tiffani also was on Saved by the Bell with Elizabeth Berkley who revealed her real stripper nature in Showgirls. The movie was called a flop when it first come out but in the meantime it has become a cult classic mainly based on Elizabeth´s stripper moves which left me no other chance than cast her as one of my alternate choices for the Nympho Supergirl from Earth XXX in my second alternatives post for casting the Justice League movie .

As I mentioned Showgirls has become a guilty pleasure for generations of men - and women - and it looks like after more than 20 years people are starting to think that there might be more to it than just some of the hottest striptease scenes in the history of movies with Elizabeth Berkley.



We start Today´s birthdays with one of my all - time tv crushes, Tatyana Ali who turns 39. She is of course best known as Ashley Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air where she was 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 ) and grew from a cute little girl into an incredible heartthrob.

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 .

Now before she was on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air Tatyana Ali appeared on Are You Afraid Of The Dark ? a series I just recently discovered thanks to Teens React. I am making my way through the episodes but before I did that I went to YouTube to learn a  bit more about it. So for any others out there who have never heard of it or never given it a chance here are some videos with the best but also and more importantly the worst episodes.





Now what you won´t find in these videos is the episode with Tatyana Ali - I guess I´m the only one who finds it noteworthy - episode 11 from season 3 called Quicksilver. While it may not be one of the best episodes it has a decent story with all the right ingredients one of them being Tatyana who is just cute as a button. Who knew she would turn into such a sexbomb ?

I included the original version because I could not find the german episode in good quality and for those readers in Germany who want to know more : here it was called Gruseln, Grauen, Gänsehaut which made it easy to confuse with Goosebumps which was translated as Gänsehaut which was uncharacteristically accurate for a german translation of a tv series title.



Our next celebrity birthday is Andreu Buenafuente who turns 53 and I´m not sure if he is known outside of Spain where he is a national institution of comedy and late night talk shows. Last year I posted a video where he interviewed El Gran Wyoming - another legend of spanish late night but Today I´m using the opportunity to post another clip with Ana Morgade.



We start our Dearly Departed section of this post as Russ Meyer muse Haji´s day of birth has another anniversary. I went over the post I did in 2016 and since there is nothing I could add at this point here is the link . 

I also want to pay tribute to Ernest Borgnine who would have celebrated his 101st birthday Today. He has played many roles like Mermaid Man on Spongebob but for me he always was Dominic Santini from Airwolf.



As longtime readers know one of my pet pevees on this blog is celebrating the actresses 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 want to give a shout out to Helene Phillips, who played the exotic dancer who gets killed so Belinda Bauer is brought in ( she´s an exotic dancer, not a stripper because she doesn´t take her clothes of ). Some people take the fact that Helene´s character gets offed as reinforcement that women with big breasts only get roles where they get killed off quickly while the flatchested girls have larger roles but Belinda´s character also gets killed. Although Belinda does indeed have more screen time than Helene Phillips now that I think of it.

Now one of the reasons why I love writing this section is that I always learn new things like for example that Helene Phillips was one of the original Solid Gold dancers. Which I didn´t know because as old as I am that was still a bit before my time. I was always more an Mtv´s The Grind guy, especially the beach episodes. But that´s a topic for another post.



Speaking about finding out new things, thankfully I decided to go over the birthday list for Today one more time even though I wrote the Tatyana Ali birthday post last year. Because no matter how many times you go over the list there is always somebody you overlook and I don´t know if I could ever return to Spain if I failed to acknowledge the late Manuel Vazquez Gallego a.k.a. The Great Vazquez, one of the pioneers of spanish comic books. I mentioned him once or twice before because one of his comics - Anacleto, Agente Secreto - has been adapted as a movie. The english title is Spy Time and I think it´s one of the best comic book movies out there.

Much better than the latest Marvel releases and I won´t even mention the DC abominations. Anyway, Vazquez´ earliest comics were published in the Editorial Bruguera comic publications Pulgarcito, the legendary TBO ( from which the spanish name for comic books " tebeos " was derived ) or DDT.

Since I have already posted the trailer and de facto the entire movie - although that has probably been deleted - and there are not many reviews I can´t pimp the film any further although truth to tell if people out there still haven´t caught on to this cineastic masterpiece I don´t know what else I could do. I also mentioned the movie El Gran Vazquez with Santiago Segura as the main character that is based on Vazquez´ life story which according to people in the know was much more exciting and fantastic then what he put on paper which is a feat unto itself. I tried to watch but I had to give up after fifteen minutes because I can´t stand people who think they are smarter than everybody else but just end up ruining their own life. So here is one of Vazquez other comic series The Gilda Sisters.



We are coming from comic books to a different kind of comics with the last pop culture icon I want to pay homage to, the great late John Belushi.



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Anacleto nunca falla !