Thursday, March 29, 2018

It´s Cyberforce Thursday with Marc Silvestri

Today is Marc Silvestri´s 60th birthday so because we had a DC Comics themed post and one about Marvel Comics I thought why not take another trip in the way back machine to those days when Image Comics was king ?


Now if you have stuck with this blog for a while you know that last year I did an overview of Marc Silvestri´s various series with the main part being about his run on UNCANNY X - MEN as it´s my favorite period of the team.

I wrote about this at length in my CHRISTMAS WITH MARC SILVESTRI`S X - MEN post and my birthday post for inker Dan Green last year also featured a lot of original pages from Marc Silvestri. As I said before so far I have not bought one of those Artist´s Editions because 150 EUROS and more is way beyond my average price point - though I am sorely tempted with the one about Gene Colan´s THE TOMB OF DRACULA - but if they ever do one with Marc Silvestri´s best issues for UNCANNY X - MEN I´m done for. Game over.


But that´s not what this post is about. Lately there has been a trend to bring back the 80s style in tv shows like Stranger Things or comic books like Paper Girls ( while I haven´t seen the first one I can recommend the latter although it is starting to have a lot of SJW tropes and if you want to get it get the deluxe edition straight away ) and the 90s are also starting to come back in vogue. I guess nostalgia manages to paint everything more favorable and as I have said in numerous posts the 90s weren´t as bad for comic fans as some people will let you believe. Heck, DC based pretty much all of their NEW 52 line on the look and feel of old 90s Image Comics. Which for me was one of the reasons why I didn´t care so much for it. Because like with Marvel re - hashing their old story ideas while calling them All - New I had already lived it. And why should I pay good money for cheap knock offs when I had already read the original version ?

So back in the 90s Image Comics was just starting and every new book was an event and immediate bestseller. Today they want to make you believe that it was a sure hit but when the company was founded nobody knew if it would succeed or fail. It was a huge risk but it did pay off. One of the reasons why the Image books made comic fans go crazy was that they were one of the first comic book companies to use computer coloring.


Which is one of the problems I had with finding the color art for the black and white originals. You see, while it was not difficult to find the right pages because of the computer coloring they are pretty dark and at first I did not want to include them after all. But in the end I decided that pages that are not optimal are still better than no color pages. So sorry, if they are not the best or the art can not be seen clearly in some instances.


There is currently a new version of CYBERFORCE on the stands but I don´t think it can ever achieve the level of reception that the original series got. Because it hit just the Zeitgeist. Before Image most comics were story driven and artists were not treated very well - basically like they are treated Today as history repeats itself - so when they came along with their new approach that emphasized the art and less the story ( as most books hadn´t much of a story to begin with ) it was something new.


For me as someone who always had aspirations to be an artist and who therefore always looked at the art first this was a really exciting time. Of course the whole thing collapsed in unto itself and all most people now think of when they hear somebody mention the 90s are big boobs, the big muscles, big guns, headbands or bandanas and oh so many pouches. But that´s because artists like Marc Silvestri were so good at drawing all that.


CYBERFORCE combined everything that was hip and current at that time - hot babes with big boobs, small hips and legs up to their chin, techno ninjas, secret strikeforce teams etc. - and put it through the blender. The result was a series that had everything a boy could ever want in a comic.  


Now as usual I have looked if there are any collections available and there are several trade paperbacks but you might just go for the back issues because at least here in Germany comic book dealers have so many copies - because there also was a german edition of the series - that they can´t give them away. I don´t know how things are overseas but every dealer who tells you those are rare issues is completely full of it. Come on, these issues are not rare. Some people bought so many copies that they used them for the insulation on their houses when they could not sell them.


If you are looking for a hardcover version the only one that includes some of Marc Silvestri´s issue for CYBERFORCE is the ABSOLUTE WILDC.A.T.S. book since there was the Killer Instinct crossover with the first issues of volume two. The regular price on the 600+ page book is 125 Dollars but you can get it from amazon.de for 64 EUROS including package and shipping.


Anyway, I´m only putting that out because I know how tight the comic budget is for some people with regular books going between 4 and 5 bucks. So let´s get to the rest of the artwork I have selected for this post.


I have just a few links Today for those who are thinking about buying the Absolute WildC.A.T.S. book. With this new generation of comic readers who missed all of the initial Image series and may not have read it yet a review of the Killer Instinct crossover for my spanish readers can be found on COMIC BOOK FAN AND LOVER and for those who are only familiar with Jim Lee from Marvel´s Heroes Reborn Fantastic Four issues or his work for DC on Batman : Hush or the Robotech Justice League MARS WILL SEND NO MORE has a few posts about the art of Jim Lee´s WildC.A.T.S. including one on the crossover with Cyberforce , a four page splash of Warblade from one of the crossover issues, another Warblade splash page and the ultimate piece de resistance, a four page mega splash of Zealot and Grifter although the main focus is clearly on Zealot and her incredibly long legs.


There is also a callback to my last post as I always find stuff when I have finished the posts. After all the work I put into it I don´t want to go back again - because I spend too much time on the posts as it is - so here´s an interview with José Luis García - López by Jacque Nodell on CHARLTON NEO about his work on romance comics. As I had read so much about all the great talent that came through the doors of Charlton Comics I bought a few issues of the Charlton Neo publication The Charlton Arrow but I was completely disappointed. For whatever reasons none of the great super heroes nor the classic creators were in these issues and even the names I recognized - John Byrne and Jim Aparo - did not deliver. From the first one they just had a pin up from his Doomsday + 1 series as for Jim Aparo the material was a story for The Monkees. Which 20 years ago would have not interested me since I was not that knowledgeable about the band.


I would have preferred something from Space Adventure, Nightshade or Doctor Graves but I thought Why not ? It might be interesting to see Jim Aparo doing kind of a funny style with the Monkees. Well, the problem was that they re - printed the story sideways so they could get two story pages on one page and to make matters worse instead of black the art is printed in red, blue, green and violet. So you can´t see anything of the art. There are some other series in the issues but for somebody like me who is not a Charlton Comics aficionado they were not very interesting. 


Of course I later found out that there was some material that would have been much more up my alley. Check out Tess Orbit : Lace Cadet by Al Hartley from Crazy 1 which comes courtesy of ATOMIC KOMMIE COMICS .


To add insult to injury RIP JAGGER`S DOJO has a post on Jack Sparkling´s Cher D´Flower, a comic strip in Charlton´s satire magazine Sick about a female reporter who conducts interviews although those are just an excuse to show the girl in little clothing or wearing next to nothing.


Holy fan service, Batman ! It looks like they saved all the good stuff for volume two. In the issues I got you there are some stories of Peacemaker, Captain Mercury or Mr. Jigsaw but all you get of E - Man is an interview with Joe Staton and for new E - Man stories you have to buy volume two. 


We start Today´s entertainment section with the original Screaming Mimi with the playmate body of sound, Mariah Carey who celebrated her 48th birthday just two days ago. At least if my online sources are correct.


Because some online pages say she was born 1969 while others say it was 1970. I´m going with 1970 because that was the date that was official when I wrote my first Mariah Carey posts back on the old boob blog.

Another thing that´s hard to get official accuracy on is Mariah Carey´s breastsize. I googled it Today but the " official " size is 38D which is totally bogus. I mean around the time of the Annual Golden Globe Awards in 2010 her breastsize was officially confirmed as 38DD and by 2012 when she did the Christmas video with Justin Bieber her jingle bells had grown another few sizes bigger so they must have been 40DD or at least 39DD. So maybe I am biased but these gigantic gazongas do not look like 38Ds to me, sorry.


Now aside the ever changing unrealistic breastsize, as readers of this blog know I have been a big fan of the cult siren - in every sense of the word - since forever and a day and I bet there was a whole plethora that was relieved when I made the decision to split my blog into a comic book blog and a boob blog because they weren´t inundated by dozens of Mariah Carey posts anymore suffering all those hot pictures of the sex symbol.


Of course this meant I was given free reign to my obsession with Mariah Carey and to give you an idea : on the boob blog there where so many Mariah Carey posts that I had to create one big Über - post with links to all the other posts so I could put it in the links. Mariah Carey was the first cult sexbomb I did this for even before Halle Berry and Janet Jackson.


So it´s even more incredible that I still haven´t done a solo post for the number three of my all time favorite sexual fantasies and only included her in my second alternates post of the Casting the Justice League movie series especially since she is single again. Nick Cannon really messed up.


My number one on that list is of course the best body in showbiz, Janet " All Night - Don´t Stop " Action Jackson, the living blow up sex doll that walks and she has three solo posts besides three entries in my JLA cast .


My number two has changed, which used to be cinema cult siren Halle Berry who did a remarkable sexy dance ( not a striptease as she didn´t take her clothes off ) in The Last Boy Scout , teased us in Catwoman and finally delivered in Password : Swordfish and Monster´s Ball . She also appears in my Justice League movie casting and got even four solo posts .


You might ask who my new number two is and it is probably no surprise that Yaya Han, the cosplay queen who got herself 40D oppais has that position. Not only based on the fact that my chances of bumping into her at a comic convention are higher than of actually meeting anybody else on this list but also because she combines four of my favorite things. Asian sexbombs, women with big boobs, video games and comics. I mean, how many chicks do you know who bring their own Chun Li / Power Girl outfit ?


And how many do a practical topless cosplay like Yaya Han´s War Goddess Enyo where she is only wearing some microscopic pasties on her boobs ?


Speaking of Yaya Han´s flawless cosplays, the more attentive viewer may have noticed that in both of her best Chun Li videos ( number 1 at 0:34 / number 2 at 0:28 ) Yaya Han gives the audience an unexpected bonus with her " boob twitch " which some people may think is an involuntary reflex.


Not so my friend. It´s all planned. Women have full control of this and what´s more have special workout exercises to gain control over men.


This hot sexbomb is vietnamese Jeannie Mai and even though she is " only " a 37C and not a 40D like Yaya Han I think she could be a body double for those explicit scenes. At least it would be fun to test her out on the casting couch. Man, how come I never heard of her ? She´s damn hot.


Anyway, here is the full video of her special breast workout. For that I would definitely go to the gymn. And if anybody out there knows where I can find the full show of this please let me know in the comments below.



So far I have made five posts on Yaya - two of them are pretty safe but the other three are absolutely not safe for work - and I keep mentioning her on various JLA casting posts and any other posts involving asian sexbombs like Kiana Tom, Ava Cadell, Akira Lane, Miko Lee, Gail Kim or Minka and I swear the completely NSFW BIG YAYA HAN POST is still in the pipeline.


One of the perks of doing these short - or not so short in most cases - birthday inserts is they remind me of all the things I put on the back burner because of all that life stuff. It´s my chance to catch up on everything I have missed like Mariah Carey getting her own star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. As always I tried to include a special video for her birthday but for some reason all of the videos of her spectacular performance in a Jessica Rabbit like dress at the 2014 BET Awards keep being deleted on You Tube. But you can see her shortly in the video below.



And since Mariah Carey´s part is rather short here is one of her better appearances Ellen . As usual it has to be in two parts but the upside is that maybe if one of them gets taken down we still have the other one.




Because I did a post on Marc Silvestri´s birthday last year I can skip all the anniversaries I already covered and include one for whom I didn´t have a good video. To my german readers I don´t have to explain Helmut Zerlett who turns 61 because he was one of the fixtures of the Harald Schmidt Show. I didn´t get to see many episodes because it was always on so late and for the benefit of those readers who don´t understand german as well as for myself I picked the one with german singer Nicole Safft a. k. a. Nicci Juice a. k. a. Rollergirl who is best known for two things ( or is that three things ? ) : the trademark obligatory roller skates and her speed bumpers .


Daimn, that girl knows how to wear a shirt. As for the Harald Schmidt Show it was not as funny as Schmidteinander where Herbert Feuerstein wrote his material who also was the editor for the german version of MAD.



A quick aside for my younger german readers : I´m pretty certain this is the Walter Matthau sketch Harald mentions Rollergirl would be perfect for.



I´m pretty sure I already posted the first episode of the 90s WildC.A.T.S. cartoon show but since there is no cartoon of Cyberforce here is a video with the first five episodes and you can find part 2 and part 3 on YouTube.



Now I could explain why there never was a Cyberforce cartoon but I think it´s better to let Marc Silvestri do the honors. And he also talks about of other interesting things relating to Image Comics in SyFyWire´s interview.



We close things out with the spanish version of Danger : Diabolik which I already wanted to include in my last post. There are a few more videos related to this cult classic you will see on this blog but so far I haven´t found a german language version. I´m not sure that they ever made one.



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My robot brain needs beer.

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