Man, it really seems the more I try to draw the less I succeed. Here once again the old proverb comes to play when you can do anything the hardest part is doing something. Which took me a long while to really understand.
Anyway, I have missed quite a few birthdays since our last episode but since I am trying to keep this blog as authentic as possible I have decided not to write one of these posts retroactively and also not dwell on days of birthdays past. Still keeping the Ying and Yang of alternating between Marvel, DC and independent posts intact this post had to be a DC post since our last post was all about Kerry Gammill and Marvel. Now as usual I have all sorts of DC stuff in the various folders and the question is here what would be adequate. Because as the first post of the month - that is probably going to stay for a good while on the top of the blog since I still have to do tons of work for my comic project as well as other stuff like shopping Tomorrow and Gratis Comic Tag on Saturday - I didn´t just want to put up any old thing. Which is why I am not continuing with the next chapter of George Perez´ run on THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. I already have all the material for that lined up but I hope to do more than two posts this month and I want to save that series for when I´m really pressed for time.
I thought about doing my often postponed BLACK AND WHITE post with George Perez´ NEW TEEN TITANS but I also cancelled that because of the possibility of having two DC posts with George Perez in one month. So I went back to THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD but instead of George Perez I went with the O. G. artist Jim Aparo. But again, after going over the material I decided there was not enough quality material for a new post although I wanted to pimp the latest volume of DC´s reprinting of it which for me is the best and at the same time the worst of the three volumes.
So here we are with a very special issue that features a four way ( team - up that is, get your mind out of the gutter ) with Green Arrow, Black Canary, Batman and Catwoman who was at that time starting to work with the Dark Knight as a reluctant, reformed partner. I think their relationship was sabotaged by the Joker later on in the Alan Davis stories when he brainwashed Catwoman into being a criminal again. Because comics.
Anyway, I wanted to put some stuff of this issue in my last post about Gene Colan´s stint on the Batman books but because I included most of DETECTIVE COMICS issue 533 I would have only been able to include part of it and I think the story by Doug Moench is too good to break it up.
You won´t find this in the second volume of the Gene Colan BATMAN collection - which is another reason why I didn´t include it in said post - but it is part of GREEN ARROW - A CELEBRATION OF 75 YEARS and the reason why I almost coughed up the 32 bucks you pay at amazon for it.
Because it has been a long time since my last post I am skipping Today´s anniversaries ( as usual I went over the list but there are none I haven´t already addressed in earlier posts ) for those I missed starting with Lee Falk whose birthday was on the 28th of April. Now waaaay back in 2003 PHANTOM FRIDAY was supposed to become a regular feature on the post but as usual after that first entry I never got around to post all the other material I had compiled and Lee Falk´s most famous creation ( he also came up with Mandrake, the Magician ) only appeared in the occasional birthday post of such artists like Paul Ryan , Sal Velluto or Bob McLeod .
Since I have already posted two videos related to the Phantom movie with Billy Zane - which in my opinion is very underrated - I wanted to go with something different Today especially since Defenders of the Earth not only features the Ghost Who Walks but also Mandrake the Magician.
Continuing with the comic related birthdays I probably would not have mentioned Bill Sienkiewicz who turned 60th on May the 3rd. Not because I can´t appreciate his work but because I haven´t done a proper post about him - yet. The only material I have about him right now is for the next part of pimping the Marvel Visionaries - Chris Claremont hardcover and that´s one post for which I definitely need more time. But as fate would have it while doing the research for my last post I came across MARVEL COMICS OF THE 1980s and their post with the original art for the cover of Marvel Fanfare 38 . I also found the Fallen Angels pin up that I forgot to put in the links on their website and I wanted to correct that grave oversight.
Speaking of the Marvel Visionaries hardcovers, one I wrapped up in one post ( though I may revisit it again in the future ) is the one about John Romita Jr. and among the issues included in that collection is Iron Man 128, the famous Demon In A Bottle story written by none other than David Micheline who celebrated his 70th birthday on May the 6th.
And while I haven´t done yet any posts expressively for David Micheline he was part of the team - together with Bob Layton and John Romita Jr. - that brought Iron Man back from possible cancellation and I have written about that run - or better yet runs since they were on and off on that book - ad nauseum starting in 2013 when I pimped the Iron Man by David Micheline, Bob Layton and John Romita Jr Omnibus hardcover that was sold through amazon Germany for a measly 57 EUROS ( I bet everybody who didn´t believe me that it was a bargain price are kicking themselves now because the current price is between 90 and 150 bucks ) back then.
I continued the topic of his run on Iron Man in my first real Bob Layton birthday post in 2013 - where I almost forgot his birthday but managed to get a post in under the wire - while the 2014 post concentrated on the return to greatness when I started reading american comics and Bob Layton and David Micheline engaged in the first Armor Wars. The post also included some art pages from issue 232 by the great Barry Windsor Smith.
In 2015 I got on a bit of tangent because I know that money is always tight for comic readers so the post was mainly about which issues of Iron Man have already been reprinted where and in 2016 I decided to take a break from Iron Man and do a spotlight on Bob Layton´s Hercules mini - series .
For more gorgeous art from David Micheline´s run on Iron Man check out the splash pages by John Romita Jr. and Bob Layton on DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND and go to the website NOT A HOAX ! NOT A DREAM ! which has posts on Iron Man 117 , Iron Man 119 , Iron Man 127 and Iron Man 142 .
We are briefly returning to the DC side of things with Jon Bogdanove who turned 60 on May the 7th. Okay, I know that he started out at Marvel but where I really saw his art on a regular basis was in the latter part of the John Byrne revamp of all the Superman books after John Byrne had left and these artists came in that soon would become favorites of mine like George Perez, Dan Jurgens, Ron Frenz, Bob McLeod or Kerry Gammill to name just a few. With a name like Tales From The Kryptonian I naturally wanted to seize the opportunity to put more art from that decade on the blog but as I realized after re - reading it again there´s really not much I could add to the belated Jon Bogdanove birthday post I wrote in 2016 .
For all those readers who missed this era - but especially for those new comic readers in Germany - here is another video from Crayton´s Comic Blog ( which all readers who understand german should check out ) that explains the whole triangle numbering concept at length. Which seems a bit complicated but I had a subscription to all the Superman titles during that time and it really helped with reading the issues in the right order.
What I found so great during that time is that while you could read all of the titles or you could read just one series without getting the impression you were missing something. And what was even better was that each issue had its own little story that even if you missed all of the previous ones you got everything to enjoy this issue. Somehow DC has lost the ability to do that and I think it´s because they don´t have real editors.
Our last shoutout goes to not only one of the greatest comic artist but one of the greatest artist - period - who ever lived and whose anniversary was on Tuesday. I have written at length in my unofficial series World´s Greatest Comic Artists about the great Moebius and his sci fi comics like The Incal as well as Jean Giraud´s famous western comic Blueberry .
I even wrote a Movie Rummage Table special about the animated movie Time Masters which is a must see for fans of Moebius or animated sci fi.
You know, one thing you shouldn´t do when you are hitting a roadblock with your comic project is trying to select one piece of art that is the quintessence of Moebius´ work. Because as frustrated as you are with not being able to bring your ideas to paper seeing how flawless his ideas seem to jump at you from his pictures only increases that by the power of ten.
On the other side you might get some ideas just from looking through all the cool images. I have already posted Moebius Redux but here it is again for those who have not seen it yet ( click here for the spanish version ).
Now there are not a lot of hot babes in this entertainment section but we had plenty of that in our previous posts so I think that we can survive one post without. To close things out here is a video that includes at least one character from our main post as Minute Match - Ups pits DC´s anarchistic anti - establishment archer against Marvel´s brusque but bashful bowman.
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
So Fate demands !
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