As longtime readers know I´m a huge fan of George Perez´art so it won´t surprise any of them that among all the great comic series Kurt Busiek has worked on over the decades I picked this title for a special spotlight post.
Especially since I have collected a lot of gorgeous - no pun intended - original art pages which I haven´t had the time or place to post yet.
Which is what this post was initially going to be - just the best original art of George Perez´ second run on AVENGERS - but as usual things didn´t go as planned. Because while doing the research to find the according color pages for the original art I had selected it dawned on me that this post should not be primary about the art since it is a post about Kurt Busiek and therefore his writing should be involved in a more prominent way.
So while there are still some amazing original art pages in this post most of it are pages from the comics where you can enjoy Kurt Busiek´s writing.
For this post I have selected pages from two issues of AVENGERS and both feature the Scarlet Witch at the forefront. As much as somebody can be on the forefront in a title with more than 40 cast members. But Wanda Maximoff is a very interesting character if she is written the right way, something Marvel seems unable to do anymore. It´s one of the things that got me off Marvel as they come up with one stupid idea after another. It was bad enough that Bendis used her as his eternal deus ex machina while clearly not having much knowledge of her past history. Or the history of any of the Marvel characters when you think about it. Not only did he gravely misuse the Scarlet Witch in AVENGERS ASSEMBLE and ever since he also had Doctor Strange proclaim that there is no such thing as Chaos Magic AFTER a storyline in which Stephen Strange could no longer call on the usual magic beings for help - Agamotto, Vishanti, Hoggoth, etc. - and had to go in search of a new kind of magic to protect the earth from evil.
That new kind of magic he eventually found ? That´s right . Chaos Magic.
What he later said did not exist. I don´t know how that particular story ended but even if he was not actually using Chaos Magic during AVENGERS ASSEMBLE he should at least know it exists and not proclaim nonsense.
Anyway, back to GOOD writing. One of the things that made Kurt Busiek´s stint on AVENGERS so enjoyable is that rather than re - imagening the team he just remembered them. There is so much Avengers lore that you don´t have to come up with a radical new twist, you can tell stories with them as they are. Because one of the things that makes this team so interesting are the ties between the members which go back for decades.
In the case of the Scarlet Witch it are her ties with her husband Vision, with Wonder Man Simon Williams whose brain engrams were used to build the Vision ( or not depending on the retcon of the week ) and Simon´s brother the Grim Reaper, with Quciksilver and with Magneto. Who is her father no matter what anybody at Marvel may tell you. I mean, they even changed his name from Erik Magnus Lensherr to Max Eisenhardt - a terrible name especially the german readers - which makes absolutely no sense.
Coming back to Kurt Busiek´s AVENGERS the first part of this is from issue 3, the culmination of the team´s battle against Morgan Le Fay where the Scarlet Witch shows her strength. Whoever thinks that Wanda is a boring team member clearly has no understanding of the team´s rich history. And George Perez obviously was having a ball drawing all the Avengers in armor.
I included the last page of issue 3 on purpose because our second issue in this post is number 14, one of the funniest in the run. But how could it be any different when everybody´s favorite blue - furred X - Men guest stars.
Some people forget that Hank McCoy started out as part of Marvel´s merry mutants and he is one of the few super heroes in the Marvel universe who has successfully pulled off double duty on two teams without bad blood.
In the issue Hank invites Wonder Man and the Scarlet Witch to a night on the town after Simon Williams has come back from the dead for good ( in issue 3 it seemed like he was gone again but check out issues 10 and 11 to see how he came back ). Vision says he has other plans but joins them later anyway. What makes the issue great is that not only do they have a chat about old times but there is also a lot of action. Which could be the ends to a means in itself but writer Kurt Busiek aptly uses it to flesh out the characters. Captain America joins the battle in the middle of the fight but in this case his take charge attitude botches everything up which will lead to Wanda taking up the mantle of leadership further down the line.
Since I had this material already prepared there are not a lot of links for this post. But even if it would fit a Fantastic Four post better I want to bring your attention to my old link pals at CRIVENS ! COMICS AND STUFF where you can find a short personal anecdote about Fantastic Four 232 by John Byrne which has been just released as a True Believers 1 $ reprint.
Which I can only recommend to anybody. As a comic reader who has a certain standard - although some people who know me like Geier would digress - it has become extremely difficult to find enough series for an online order. I only have a handful of series left on my pull list so whenever a new or interesting series comes out I usually either wait for the trade - when I am sure I am going to buy it - or get the issues online to test it out. Because of that there were 10 True Believers issues in my last order.
Now the first time I ordered a lot of those issues I did it to give all the new series with the female Thor and Spider - Gwen, Spider - Woman and all these ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT heroines a chance. Because I might be wrong. Maybe it´s not just a cheap publicity stunt by Disney and the series are actually good. Nah, I didn´t believe it either and sometimes I have it when I am right because even at one buck per comic I felt robbed.
Not this time though, no Sireebob ! Do you have any idea how great it feels to get 10 comics for 10 EURO ? And 10 really good comics not 10 so la la comics or 10 okay, not outright crappy comics. It took me back to when I started reading american comics and I had my first comic subscription.
Back then my comics would arrived once a month I would pay something between 20 and 30 Deutschmark ( this was back when Germany had a strong currency ) and would get between 20 and 30 comic books. And I would read them all during the weekend and that was a great weekend.
I am not sure if it really is wise of Disney to keep putting these reprints out and showing how good Marvel used to be. I mean, compared to the dreck they are now trying to peddle that was Shakespeare - and in the case of Stan Lee writing Thor even moreso. But I guess they don´t think long term and are trying to sell Epic Collections and Marvel Masterworks.
Which are great, don´t get me wrong. Longtime readers may remember that when the Epic Collections were first announced I was very cautious.
As someone who had to suffer the horrible pocket books by german publisher Condor I feared that they could likewise just fall apart after the third reading. Also with such thick volumes you either need a thicker gutter or a very strong glue. And then there´s the price which is much higher than the Essential books. But in the end it turned out that there was no gutter loss, you can easily open the books without them falling apart no matter how often you read them and while they are still pricey you can find them sometimes at a very reasonable price at amazon.
In fact right now ( and this will probably change as soon as I´m finished typing this ) there are several volumes offered at amazon Germany at bargain prices : three for 27 bucks including Silver Surfer - The Infinity Gauntlet which will not stay at this price long with the Avengers movies and Master of Kung Fu - Weapon of the Soul which I will buy sooner or later, two for 26 shekels including Thor - In Mortal Flesh which I can recommend to anybody who wants to read the real Thor not the Disney princess from the movies or Thor Girl, three for 25 smackarooneys, four for 24 buckaroos including Amazing Spider - Man - Return of the Sinister Six which is almost all Erik Larsen Spider - Man which is not only beautiful to look at but fun to read, Fantastic Four - All in the Family for 23 doubloons, one for 22 pesos and Wolverine - Mardipoor Nights for a measly 21 EUROS.
As for the Marvel Masterworks, while you rarely find these hardcovers at half price there are several in the bargain section between 45 and 65 EUROS at any given time. Speaking of Marvel Masterworks there is also an interesting post on CRIVENS ! COMICS & STUFF about restoring some Jack Kirby FANTASTIC FOUR pages from the british version where pages were cut up and panels erased or re - arranged ( I think I already mentioned that the same happened in a lot of german reprints of the Marvel Comics but most blatantly in those issues published by the Bildschriftenverlag ).
One of my favorite subjects are horror comics and DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND has 13 great covers from DC´s classic horror series The House Of Secrets which includes the famous cover for issue 93 by Bernie Wrightson, there is also a post with 13 of Bernie Wrightson´s best splash pages from House of Secrets as well as from DC´s House of Mystery and Warren Publishing´s Creepy, you can find an article about Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson´s Swamp Thing on APOCOLYTE`S WORLD OF COMICS and ATOMIC JUNK SHOP has a post in memory of the late Bernie Wrightson.
I am trying to cut down on the birthdays to make the posts shorter and also cut down on the hot babes which took over the last few missives so I am only going to mention four birthdays which I missed since my last post because new readers to Tales From The Kryptonian might want to go back and check out my older posts. The first one is Richard Corben who turned 78 two days ago. He is an artist I used to follow religiously which back when I first saw his artwork was pretty easy because he didn´t make as much stuff. Or maybe it just seemed that way because I was still mostly sticking to german stuff and there was not so much being translated.
In any case my older brother was more the one who collected his stuff so I only kind of inherited him. Lately he does a lot of mini series which is one of the reasons why I still haven´t read his latest ones. Because based on the sorry state of the american comic book industry now I have become one of the readers who prefers to wait for the trade - or better yet the hardcover since Richard Corben´s stuff looks so much better in a nice hardcover book - and sometimes I just wait and wait until I buy them.
So far I have written various posts about Richard Corben over the years, starting in March of 2009 when I pimped the Haunt of Horror hardcover that was at a bargain price at amazon. I also did a special post about Hellboy in Mexico with a lot of stuff about lucha libre - the mexican version of wrestling - and another Hellboy comic by Richard Corben, The Crooked Man was part of a post with some reading tips for Halloween .
His version of The Raven was in a double feature on Edgar Allen Poe´s anniversary together with The Black Cat by the late Bernie Wrightson and in 2016 I did one of my usual posts with lots of original art from series like Cage to Hellblazer. At the moment I haven´t anything prepared and I first have to sort through all of the stuff I have collected since my last one but I think if I write a new one it will probably be one with original art pages.
From comics we make the jump to hot sexbombs as I pay tribute to two spanish massitas who also had their anniversary on the 1st of October.
Number one is Mar Saura who celebrated her43rd birthday and in her case wikipedia really needs to be updated because while it mentions her appearace in Los Mysterios De Laura it doesn´t acknowledge that she played a big role in season two of El Ministerio Del Tiempo one of Spain´s most successful series which I have mentioned a few times before. Since I try to pimp the series as much as I can I was looking for an episode with her or some good scenes but there are mostly interviews so I´m leaving you with Mar Saura´s biggest impact on spanish tv history : her sexy wardrobe malfunction on the show Verano Noche ( Summer Night ).
Speaking about great moments in tv history brings us to Sonia Monroy who turned 46. She became famous as a member of the aptly named all busty pop group Las Sex Bombs whose debut album sold 50,000 copies in Spain and went gold. She also was on the spanish version of Survivor and her best appearance was on a talk show where she wore a dress with the mother of all cleavages even rivaling Kylie Minogue´s plunging mega cleavage in I Just Can´t Get You Out Of My Head and it´s a miracle she didn´t have a wardrobe malfunction although the dress didn´t leave anything to the imagination where her 38D airbags are concerned either.
Back when I spent my summer vacations in Spain I always tried to tape as much of spanish tv as I could because it had to help me survive german tv for the rest of the year. So one year I was very tired when I finally arrived home and decided to leave setting up the vcr for the next day and Sonia Monroy´s appearance was the first thing I saw on spanish tv. I set up the vcr the next day but of course the show was not repeated and it took me a few years to find even some small clip on the internet. From then on setting up the vcr was always the first thing I did when I came home.
After this quick tangent it´s back to comic books with Frank Miller who celebrated his 61st birthday Yesterday. And while I haven´t done a post on his birthday yet I wrote about his iconic Daredevil run that redefined the character for all future generations in 2017 and about his work on the Spider - Man books in 2018 because that is something a lot of people are not aware of. My next Frank Miller post will probably be another Daredevil post since I have enough original art pages for that although I am having a hard time to depict his Daredevil chapter as the be - all - end - all when it comes to the blind crime fighter. As longtime readers know - and it is probably sacrilege to say it - my favorite run on Daredevil is not by Frank Miller ( and Klaus Janson, let´s not forget his great work in this ) and while I can appreciate what he brought to the character and the mythos with such great stories like Born Again for me the best run was by Ann Nocenti and John Romita Jr and I will buy an artists´edition of that long before spending money on one about Frank Miller´s Daredevil. If ever.
Somebody for whom I definitely don´t have enough material yet is Rob Liefeld who turns 51 and ushers in Today´s celebrity birthdays. It has become en vogue to bash Rob and I almost want to add the man, the myth, the legend. Because regardless of what you may think about his art or his comic books you know that somebody is iconic when there is a clear before and after. And there definitely was a time before Rob Liefeld and a time after Rob Liefeld in comic books. Now for some it all boils down to bad 90s comic books and I have to say I was not too thrilled when he took over New Mutants from Bret Blevins. Who drew one of my favorite comic books that got started in the 90s Sleepwalker. Anyway, I didn´t like it when Rob Liefeld took over New Mutants and turned it into a paramilitary wet dream with X - Force. And yes, I didn´t like Deadpool even then.
But while he embodies everything that was wrong with 90s comics it´s not as if he drew what nobody wanted. Comic fans went nuts over his books. Which was one of the reasons he then went an co founded iMAGE.
If you watch any documentary about the formation of iMAGE Comics you always hear that Rob Liefeld was the greatest advocate of that and that he motivated a lot of those guys. So if you are reading any iMAGE Comics Today - and if you are reading this blog you probably do love the Saga, Savage Dragon, Invincible, Paper Girls, The Walking Dead - you also have Rob Liefeld to thank for that. Is his art the best ? No, it isn´t. Is he the greatest comic book writer ? No, he isn´t. Did he make a Captain America comic that was not that great and got a lot of ridicule ? Yes, he did. Is it the worst comic I have ever read ? No. I read this around the same time John Byrne´s Spider - Man reboot Chapter One came out and I have to say Rob Liefeld kept me more entertained. So with the wisdom of age and as somebody who is still trying to get into comics at over 50 I have to give him respect for what he did. And while I am not ignoring the not so great comics he did there are some that I really enjoyed or some he created where other creative teams have taken them over and run with them.
One such character is Supreme who was only a cheap Superman knock off until Alan Moore got his hands on him and wrote all the Superman stories DC didn´t let him do. And you even get the great Chris Sprouse doing the art for the last leg of it. So that is my recommendation for the day. Go and find Alan Moore´s Supreme and you probably have to go to the back issue bins for these ( issues 41 and up ). There were some trades but they are out of print now and if you find one consider yourself extremely lucky.
There are a few videos about Rob Liefeld on YouTube but I am going for one I bookmarked a long time ago. Not only because I like videos where you see artists draw but because you get to see Rob Liefeld as a person.
We are staying in the 90s with Natalie Raitano who celebrates her 52nd birthday. There are a lot of pretenders to 70s jiggle television, but few ever offered the jiggle of V.I.P. This series wasn’t just a showcase for security expert Pamela Anderson , she also had a bevy of bodyguard sidekicks, incuding the lovely five foot three live wire Natalie Raitano.
Pamela was without a question the big pull of V.I.P. and the reason why the show happened in the first place but Natalie brought her a - game whenever the stories were about Nikki and I would have liked to see more of her. Thankfully Natalie did appear in a bikini shooting on the show.
One of the things I like about writing this section is that I always learn new things - especially about cult sirens who most often slip my mind - and I had no idea that lots of guys had already done their stretching exercises to Natalie’s aerobics show Hip Hop Body Shop on ESPN2.
She also left us all bodyslamming ourselves as female wrestler Luscious Lola in Slammed and appeared in the tv show Pink from where you can find some webisodes on YouTube. Natalie studied ballet, gymnastics, skiing, the piano and singing and was a member of a musical group called Breeze.
We make another time jump from the 90s back to the late 70s and early 80s with Pamela Hensley who turns 68. You may have seen her in the original Rollerball with James Caan or in Doc Savage : The Man of Bronze ( which is kind of a comic book connection since while there were comic books about Doc Savage he originated in 30s and 40s pulp magazines ) but she is best known as Princess Ardala on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
At this point I want to apologize to my regular readers in advance because I am afraid I don´t get around mentioning 80s cult siren Markie Post. You see, not only did Pamela Hensely appear on The Six Million Dollar Man with Lee Majors who played stuntman and bounty hunter Colt Seavers on The Fall Guy where Markie Post had one of her best known roles - bail bonds contract babe extraordinaire Terri Michaels - but she also guest starred in an episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. So I absolutely must mention her but I will try to keep it shorter than my usual add ons.
Produced by Glen Larson, the Buck Rogers show struck a chord with a generation of mostly male viewers in the early 80s despite lasting a mere two seasons. What was it about the show that captured the imagination ? Was it a succession of challenging plots and cutting edge writing ? Was it a weekly dose of high energy action and gritty adventure ? Or perhaps it was the show’s extraordinary vision of the future ? Or was it the space babes ?
Because lets face it : that’s what it was really all about. Hot space babes.
The show was chock full of gorgeous gals, bursting at the seams in the latest and greatest space spandex outfits the galaxy had to offer, and Buck got busy with so many of them even Captain Kirk would’ve been jealous.
And among all of this sci fi sex appeal avalanche Pamela Hensley still stands out. She never shows a trace of self - consciousness, even as she struts around in a sequin - bedecked bikini with the most bling - encrusted viking - inspired hat ever to grace the imagination of the maddest hatter ever born. And which red blooded male could forget her hot dance scene ?
There is no question about it : the character of Princess Ardala simply oozes sex. Always slinky to the extreme and wearing the least amount of clothing as possible, this self - entitled princess is more obsessed with getting Buck into the sack than ruling the galaxy. Ardala is sly, confident, manipulative and sneaky, and Pamela Hensley - a strikingly attractive woman - brings this off with a grace which makes one wonder why she didn’t go on to become a huge star ( her last major role was as the titular character´s lawyer buddy in Matt Houston ). She virtually disappeared from the screen after that and according to my research the reason is that Pamela simply decided to have a family life instead of a big movie career.
Although Ardala appeared in three episodes, it’s a pity the series didn’t utilize her more often as Hensely is terrific in the role and her relationship with Buck is both complicated and engaging. It could have proved to present quite a conundrum for Buck as time passed and he found he was growing fond of the relentless, sexually charged princess despite himself.
Speaking of which I must call foul on TOPLESS ROBOT for ranking Pamela Hensley only as the number 2 in his list of The 9 Sexiest Space Babes of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century behind Erin Gray. Because while her character is the better ally and friend he didn´t call it The 9 Best Femal Companions of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. The list are the sexiest space babes of that show and there Pamela clearly has Erin Gray beat. I would even rank Markie Post - who is only in the number 3 position even though she looks outstanding in her spandex jump suit - before Erin Gray.
Yup, now comes the part I mentioned earlier with Markie Post who is most famous for her roles on Night Court and The Fall Guy since - as longtime readers already know - I have to use every chance to mention Markie Post.
But The Fall Guy didn´t just have 80s Power Girl Markie Post they also put blonde bombshell Heather Thomas in the show right from the beginning.
She played stunt body double ( and what a body it was ) Jody and her job was to keep the male viewers hooked by providing eye candy. She was in all episodes except for an episode in the first season. Yes, fan service is not as new as some people might want you to think and Heather Thomas mainly got the part because of her absolutely amazing bikini figure. OMG !
For generations of adolescent young boys the only highlight of the week was the short moment when Heather appeared in her famous blue bikini.
Like most growing teenagers I watched that show religiously but the biggest part of its appeal for me were sexbombs like Heather Thomas and Markie Post who didn´t appear as often in a bikini as I would have liked .
Coming back to Heather Thomas, thanks to her absolutely stunning 37 ( ! ) - 23 - 32 measurements and the exposure in The Fall Guy she became a famous pin up model with posters on every hormone driven boy's bedroom wall who even managed to replace Raquel Welch on the number one spot !
80s Power Girl Markie Post is probably the best known cult siren on the blog because not only have I done many re - posts of her original post .
I also keep mentioning her in other posts and her original post is in the Top Ten Posts widget that appears on every post. Since I have done so many different versions it is not so tragic that I did not do a re - post last year even though I did the last version of her cult siren entry in 2016 .
We are staying in that time period with our last birthday shoutout which is the only one in the Dearly Departed section. There are people where you instantly recognize their name and feel like you know them even if you really don´t. In this case I am speaking about James Herriot whom most of the people from my generation will know from the tv series All Creatures Great & Small based on his books. Now most people won´t know that James Herriott was just a pseudonym and that his real name was Alf Wight. I myself have just read one of his books which I found very witty and hilariously funny but as usual time and money prevented me from pursuing this further. In any case since good episodes of The Fall Guy are hard to find here is the first episode of All Creatures Great & Small.
I should not have to mention it but the role of Tristan Farnon is played by Peter Davidson who is best known as the fifth incarnation of Doctor Who.
Keeping in mind the topic of Today you probably expected an Avengers cartoon video but the only ones I have right now are from Avengers - United They Stand and before I subject my readers to another episode of that I am going with Iron Man. I think this is from a different show than the one I posted in my last Bob Layton tribute post and it´s episode 1.
Now you might think that we had enough hot women for one post but I just had to include Lianna Grethel. Now usually I just bookmark most of the hot women I come across on YouTube and add their videos to the posts on the right occassion - most likely their birthdays - but while writing this post I came across some new videos of Lianna Grethel.
Naturally I wanted to avoid posting videos that I had already included in the posts so I went back to make sure. Well, imagine my surprise when I didn´t find any. I thought I had included a video with her at some point but apparently I just planned to do it but never did it. One reason for that might be that her birthday is not listed on the website I frequent for that kind of thing ( I have since learned that it is July the 13th 1971 which makes her 47 Today ) so she never appeared whenever I did my research.
For those who want to more about her Lianna is a model, tv host and actress that american audiences may know as a briefcase models on the NBC game show Deal Or No Deal. Born in Hartford, Conneticut she moved to Cali, Colombia at young age and the showbiz bug must have been in her boobs, I mean blood because her mother was one of the most successful colombian models of all times and her father is a well known director and tv host in Habana, Cuba. The real life Power Girl with two kids who is once divorced and married again currently hosts Alarma TV and Channel 62 Daily News simultaneously and one of her aspirations is to have her own talk show which she surely can achieve with such a big set of talents. You can find longer biographies of Lianne on the US GAME SHOWS WIKI and the DEAL OR NO DEAL WIKI and while I could not find out anything about her measurements she did a nude calendar in 2003 which may be the reason why she made the number 11 position of Complex magazine´s 50 Hottest Colombian Women in 2011. Initially I included an episode of Alarma TV in the post but because they have rather graphic content I took it out again.
If you want to see some episodes you can find them easily on YouTube. For this post I have chosen her top five clips and believe me it was hard ( and getting harder by the minute ) to narrow it down to five. There are of course many more on YouTube and you should not wait to check them out.
But now for something completely different. I don´t know if my constant mentioning of Creepshow has something to do with it ( I am not that vain that I think influentual people read my blog but on the other hand I do not believe in coincidences either ) but is seems it will be relaunched as a tv series . Let´s just hope it will be more like the first movie and not an atrocity like the third. Anyway, in that spirit since Hollywood has been remaking horror movies like crazy these past few years - probably because they can´t come up with an original idea to save their lives - here are the top 10 worst horror movie remakes so you know which movies to avoid.
Unless you already had the misfortune of seeing one of those on the list.
Speaking of movies to avoid, I still haven´t seen the second Deadpool film so I can give you no recommendation in that regard. But since it is Rob Liefeld´s birthday and he co - created him with Fabian Nicieza ( that is another thing you have Rob Liefeld to thank for ) and I don´t see myself writing a Deadpool post anywhere soon here is another minute match where the current version of Wade Wilson squares off against the first try.
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Biddi - biddi - biddi.
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