Most of these pages come from HERITAGE AUCTION so I don´t have to thank many websites which will hopefully make this post a bit shorter.
Also there are no Superman related links left to post. Now this post is a black and white post - which I prefer to do for the weekends - and it has two parts. In the first part we have the complete story The Interplanetary Olympics and you can see in the inked title page that the original title of the story had been The Day Superman Was Defeated. Which is one of the tropes from that time : Superman always had to win and had to be the super best in everything he did. I mean, he basically could substitute the complete Justice League of America which he did on a few occassions.
And he was even faster than the Flash. People say that they never knew if Superman was faster or the Flash but come on, everybody knew who was faster. To him everybody else was just a sidekick. I´m really glad that they changed that in the post Crisis DC universe because can we give the Flash a break ? He has only one lousy super power. And you won´t have him be better than everybody else in that department ? That´s ridiculous. Plus he is only technically the fastest man alive if Superman is faster than him.
Anyway, because Superman had to be infallible we got these strange stories where Superman fails - because that is interesting - but in the end they had to come up with some kind of explanation why he did not fail and it only LOOKED like he failed because - hoppla, it was all because of red kryptonite or it was all a plot to rat out spies ( which Superman did surprisingly often ) or it was some kind of kryptonian holiday or another intricate plot to justify the whole situation. In any case, here is Superman partaking in an intergalactic sports event and losing big time. Or is he ?
The second part of the post are a few more covers that I found after I finished the tribute post. Man, we really get a lot of Curt Swan this year.
Now my last post threw things into a bit of a loop here because it was not planned and it took a bit longer than anticipated so I didn´t get to do a post Yesterday where we had two important comic book related birthdays.
The first one is Tom Peyer who turned 64 and don´t worry if the name doesn´t immediately ring a bell it didn´t for me either. But it sounded vaguely familiar so last year I went to the GRAND COMIC BOOK DATABASE ( which is an invaluable resource for bloggers ) and as it turns out he wrote a lot of Flash and Legion of Super - Heroes books. And I read a lot of these books. I take every chance to put more stuff about the Legion of Super - Heroes on the blog and as longtime readers know for a very long stretch I did the weekly FLASH FRIDAY posts. Sadly things have come up lately that have prevented me from continuing with FLASH FRIDAY but I plan to bring it back as soon as possible. Tom´s birthday would have been a chance to restart the whole Flash thing or wax a bit more philosophic about the Legion. Maybe I can do a post later down the line. And yes, it was during Tom Peyer´s stint on the Legion that we got the Brainiac 5 with the stickers - or buttons or whatever those things were - on the forehead that inspired his current look on Supergirl. Anyway, for those who have become a bit curious which titles he wrote they can consult said GRAND COMIC BOOK DATABASE or just check out the post I did on him last year .
The second big name is Doug Moench who celebrated his 70th birthday Yesterday and if the blog header alone is not enough of an indication about how much I love The Hands Of Shang - Chi, Master Of Kung Fu then the many posts I wrote on the subject alone should give you an idea.
For those who came in late and missed on all the kung furying / karate chopping martial arts action I wrote two posts about the series in general and did three spotlight posts for two of the books main artists Paul Gulacy and Gene Day as well as a special post on Gil Kane who provided a lot of the early covers. I have been pimping the book like crazy and I like to think that I had a small part in convincing Disney to finally reprint this.
So far I have only been able to afford the third volume of the omnibus - and even that only at a discount and because as a birthday gift to myself I was willing to spend a bit more on it and because it´s all Mike Zeck art who is still the best artist on the book for me no matter what anybody else says - but it looks like Disney will be also reprinting them in the much more affordable Epic Collections. There will definitely be more posts about Master Of Kung Fu and I may even find to read the 3rd omnibus until then.
Now if all Doug Moench ever did had been writing The Hands Of Shang - Chi, Master Of Kung Fu it still would have been enough to secure himself a place in the comic olymp but he didn´t and I wrote a special post about all the series he worked on in 2016 . What I appreciate much more now then when it was coming out is his writing during Gene Colan´s tenure on the Batman titles since I really didn´t get Gene Colan back then. I became a bigger admirer in recent years so I might just do a post on those issues.
We start Today´s birthday countdown with inker Wade Von Grawbadger, not because he is the youngest candidate but because his year of birth is unknown. He is best known for inking Tony Harris on Starman and Stuart Immomen on a plethora of books from New Avengers to All - New X - Men.
We DO know however Sophie Howard´s year of birth so it´s pretty safe to say that she turns 35. The mega busty page 3 girl started her career as a stripper at the age of 17 and was once named as having Britain´s Best Boobs. Last year I made a joke about the fact that there is no picture on her imdb entry and that as a former glamour model ( whatever that may be ) with the stunning measurements of 38G - 26 - 34 all the pictures of her the staff had were from magazines such as Maxim, Nuts or Loaded and emphasized other parts of her body and not her face. Well, this year there still is no picture on her imdb entry so maybe they want to use this one.
Billy Zane celebrates his 52nd birthday who was on season 7 of Charmed with sexbomb Alyssa Milano , in the episode Well Cooked Hams from the Tales from the Crypt tv series and Tales from the Crypt : Demon Knight.
He also did the voice of Jason Blood / The Demon Etrigan on The New Batman Adventures but Today I want to focus on another comic book hero namely Lee Falk´s The Phantom whom Billy Zane portrayed 1996 in a much underrated movie. There are a few video reviews of the movie on YouTube but I chose this one because it has a lot of behind the scenes trivia info.
Next we have Playmate of the Month April in 1986, Teri Weigel who turns 56. Because of Teri´s perplexing physique and her protruding torpedo shaped sweater puppies she became quite popular and was in a few specials from PLAYBOY. She also was one of the few playmates who also appeared in PENTHOUSE although not as a Pet of the Month. She was just everywhere during the 80s. She later had her breasts enlarged and did porn but she looked best in her appearances on Married with Children.
What I failed to mention last year is that she also appeared in Baywatch ( she is topless in the pilot episode although that part can sometimes be censored ), Predator 2 and Savage Beach by Andy Sidaris. Fun fact : Teri Weigel and Carolyn Liu both were in PLAYBOY´s Sexy Lingerie 3 and both appeared in Andy Sidaris movies but not together. Carolyn Liu is also very well known in Germany amongst people of my generation because she took her clothes off on Tutti Frutti as did Sandra Wild, a blonde sexbomb with giant breasts who also was in an Andy Sidaris movie. And you can read more about Tutti Frutti and Power Girl Monique Sluyter in this post .
And we are staying in the 90s as one of Mtv´s best vjs EVER Ray Cokes celebrates his 60th birthday. Here is a video from the time when Mtv still played music videos most of the time and Most Wanted was must see tv.
Greg LaRoque turns 64 who is best known for his long stints on Legion of Super - Heroes and Flash. I really didn´t read much of his work on Legion of Super - Heroes but more because of a lack of availability then a lack of interest on my part. I do hope that there will be a chance to close that gap in my comic collection since DC seems to be willing to publish more Legion collections which might be in part due to its inclusion in Supergirl.
On the other side I have and love all of his Flash issues and last year I did a special FLASH FRIDAY post with issue 54 - Nobody Dies - arguably the best story written in that run. Which for some reason is missing in The Flash - A Celebration of 75 Years collection from DC but not in the german Flash Anthology hardcover. Germany clearly wins by a nose ahead of America.
Apart from that I have only written about Greg LaRoque´s run on Flash in this Christmas themed post since issue 73 not only has a Christmas story but is the lead - in to The Return of Barry Allen about which I wanted to write for ages since the Flash tv show was heavily influenced by this.
Sadly I don´t have the time to re - read all my Flash issues - which become more and more as I keep finding essential crossover issues like Manhunter ( not the martian, the other one, no, not Paul Kirk or one of his clones either ) and it bugs me that now that I almost have all the issues I can´t sit down and read them. And when I say I almost have all the issues I mean that I couldn´t find a copy of the first issue but it´s included in The Flash - A Celebration of 75 Years hardcover. At least it got that going for it. But Born To Run and The Return of Barry Allen are both definitely still in the pipeline and guess what ? Yes, Vixen did have an appearance on the book.
Since I mentioned the fast and furious rivalry between Superman and Flash in the speed department in my introduction to this post here is a video that goes into all the races between Superman and Flash in detail and tries to find out who is really the fastest man alive. And I mean the fastest MAN alive as for some reason Wonder Woman was never even considered for these kind of events even though she technically possesses the speed of Hermes, the god of speed, to whom the Flash lost in a War Of The Gods crossover issue. So she should have been a shoo - in to win one of these races but I guess she was never included because they thought she could unfairly distract the male contestants with her amazonian bouncing action of which we saw plenty in the Wonder Woman tv show with Lynda Carter.
Coming back to the races between Superman and the Flash sans Wonder Woman and the question who was really faster, in the Silver Age you had a Superman who was so powerful that everybody else fell short so it would not have been a real contest. Later Superman´s powers have gradually decreased while the Flash became faster and faster up to a point where it was just ridiculous. And I don´t even know how they both are power level wise with the NEW 52 and REBIRTH. I guess another race is due to find out who is the fastest but I doubt DC Comics would give us a definite answer.
Speaking about must see tv, Edward James Olmos who turns 71 is best known to Today´s television audiences from shows like Marvel´s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Battlestar Galactica but for me he will always be the silent and charismatic Lieutenant Castillo from Miami Vice. No offense, but one of the things that always bugged me on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica series was the idea that the humans created the cylons. Although it would explain why two of the models were such hot sexbombs like Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. On the other side the cylons would never had to go to war against the humans because if you have an unlimited amount of copies of Tricia Helfer and Grace Park there is no male human who can resist you. I guess those toasters were still lacking in basic knowledge about humans.
Because there was an episode of Third Rock From The Sun where they tried to gain control of the world´s governments by sending in a squad of women who all looked like hot swimsuit models and when you have seen this episode and know that the toasters on Galactica have hot models like Tricia Helfer and Grace Park it makes the whole war against humanity and death to humans and violence thing seem unnecessary and over the top.
Our last birthday shoutout goes to the great late Ricardo Rinaldi who has left a footprint in the german comic scene not only through his work for the Kauka Verlag on series like Fix und Foxi and Die Pichelsteiner ( the last one was especially popular because of curvy cave woman Petra ) but also as one of the founders of the International Comic Salon Erlangen in 1984.
To my knowledge there regrettably is no animated version of Die Pichelsteiner so here is another comic related cartoon with dinosaurs.
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
This show is so packed we could go on holiday.
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